Crash, V for Vendetta, The New World, Cache
An excerpt:
Paul Haggis' "Crash" has half a dozen characters ramming into each other, and instead of them coming out of their vehicles and exchanging murderous blows (the way they did in Godard's "Weekend"), or coming out of their vehicles and falling on top of each other in an erotic frenzy (the way they did in Cronenberg's film of the same name), they come out and accuse each other of racism. This worked fine for Godard and Cronenberg--they used wit and surrealism to stylize their films, to allow them to exhibit all kinds of outrageous behavior and get away with it--but Haggis seems to want us to take his collisions at face value, as serious drama, to consider them profound reflections on The Way Things Are. Which is funny too, but not in an intentional way, and not in a way that I think helps Haggis or his film at all.
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