Crash (1996)
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Reviews Counted: 50
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 21
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Critic Reviews: 11
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 7
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 55,299
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Movie Info
After surviving a brutal car wreck, commercial director James Ballard finds himself slowly drawn to a mysterious subculture of people who have transformed automobile accidents into erotic events. Like the J.G. Ballard novel that inspired it, David Cronenberg's study of the sexual dimension of man's relationship to technology was a magnet for controversy, drawing a NC-17 rating and criticism from several sources, including studio owner Ted Turner, who attempted to prevent the film's American
May 17, 1996 Wide
Nov 17, 1998
Cast
-
James Spader
James Ballard -
Holly Hunter
Dr. Helen Remington -
Elias Koteas
Vaughan -
Deborah Kara Unger
Mrs. Catherine Ballard -
Rosanna Arquette
Gabrielle -
Peter MacNeill
Colin Seagrave
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All Critics (50) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (29) | Rotten (22) | DVD (4)
For a movie obsessed with the connection between sexual intercourse and car accidents, David Cronenberg's Crash could hardly be more stationary.
Top CriticWhile the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.
It's a dark, disturbing, languorous movie, as ludicrous, hermetic and repetitive, perhaps, as Ballard's original, but admirably assured and true to itself.
Mr. Cronenberg, for once oddly inhibited by brazen subject matter, has made a meticulously stylized and controlled film that leaves many of its characters' ideas muffled and lacks the true audacity its material demands.
"Crash" doesn't extend beyond its most immediate sensationalism. When the movie does attempt to find a theme, it slams into a brick wall of mumbo-jumbo.
So far from being involving or compelling, so intentionally disconnected from any kind of recognizable emotion, that by comparison David Lynch's removed "Lost Highway" plays like "Lassie Come Home."
[A] necessarily disturbing and equally profound inquiry into human desire, however self-destructive.
With Crash, David Cronenberg drives mainstream cinema over the edge.
Crash is a mutant work of art -- a bracing splash of ice water.
Wildly unwatchable, as if someone had made Andy Warhol's Frankenstein without being in on the joke.
It's the cold survival logic of Darwin, where libertarians leave their past behind as if it were dead.
A stylish, intriguing and typically warped vision that hybridises the imaginations of Ballard and Cronenberg.
In that re-identification of "otherness," he betrays his awe of humanity.
One of the most uncomfortable movies I've ever seen.
Crash is a violently rare exception to the continually careful stride of film, and few films have been made with such a conviction to such inherently controversial material.
It may be the best movie you'll never want to see.
Audience Reviews for Crash
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Foreign Titles
- Crash (DE)
- Crash (UK)
