Saad Ahmad Date: December 14, 2014
Paper 4 ENG 101 - EF
Crash is a 2004 crime drama movie directed and produced by Paul Haggis. The movie interweaves several connected stories about gender, class, family and color in Los Angeles. The movie differs from many other films about racism because of its graphic depiction of racism shown towards a multitude of ethnicities. Rather than separating the characters into victims and offenders, victims of racism are often shown to be racist themselves in different contexts and situations. Racist remarks and actions are often shown to occur because of ignorance and misconception rather than a malicious personality.
The strongest performance is of Officer John Ryan performed by Matt Dillon. He is the racist policeman who is in agony due to his father’s suffering. He stops Cameron Thayer the black TV director and his wife Christine Thayer on the road for a security check, because she was performing fellatio on her husband in the car. Instead of giving them a warning, he treated them like criminals because he was frustrated by the black HMO worker because she was not helpful in his father’s condition. He took out his frustration on the black couple by intimidating and harassing them. Officer Ryan wasn’t inherently racist he was just frustrated and disgruntled by the treatment of his father’s condition.
Later on we see him care for his sick father and we also understand the reason for his behavior with the black HMO worker. Later on the scene turns ironically on him and he finds himself in the condition to save the black woman who he harassed earlier. The scene was very touching because it demonstrated that Officer Ryan had a good heart. While he was rescuing her she became hysterical because of what he did to her prior but he had complete control of the situation and she complied. He risked