eagle_owl

Not to be confused with the David Cronenberg movie of the same name, Crash is a film about racial tensions in Los Angeles. It paints a picture of people of different races living uneasily alongside one another, while doing their best to keep the 'others' at arms length as much as possible.

Crash boasts a large ensemble cast, ranging from established stars such as Don Cheadle and Sandra Bullock to unknown actors in breakthrough roles. Ensemble dramas can work well, but in Crash there are just too many different plot strands all vying for attention, leaving some badly underdeveloped. Bullock's character for one would definitely have benefited from more screen-time.

While the acting is strong throughout, the film is let down by its script. All anyone ever seems to talk about is race, and while this is obviously the main theme, this obsession detracts somewhat from the film's realism, and risks turning the characters into ciphers. Also everyone has to voice every thought that enters their heads, rather than occasionally letting their actions alone do the talking.

Crash is attempting to address race in the way that Traffic tackled drugs, and it is interesting to compare the two films. Traffic benefits from having fewer separate story lines, and when the strands came together at the end it is much more convincing. Also, the film feels less like a straightforward issue movie than Crash does.

While racism is the film's overarching concern, there are also spiritual overtones, which seem to be fashionable these days (they even appear in Superman Returns). In Crash they centre on a lock-fitter who pretends to hand a cloak of invincibility to his daughter. Without giving away the ending, it is very implausible, and doesn't appear to have much to do with the main thrust of the narrative.

There are some effective scenes in Crash, and even some humour (in the exchanges between the two young car-thieves). However, the film just has too many subplots, making it feel at times like an extended TV episode. Racism is certainly an issue that needs addressing, which makes it all the more disappointing that Crash doesn't rise to the occasion.

The third film in the Matrix trilogy proves to be a disappointing finale. The scope of the action is almost unprecedented but this cannot disguise the film's fundamental deficiencies. The plot is even more threadbare than usual this time around.

The biggest mistake made by Revolutions is that the series' greatest asset (the Matrix itself) is barely utilised until the final reels, leaving a film which is hard to distinguish from any random sci-fi blockbuster, throwing special effects at the screen that would make even George Lucas's eyes bulge. When the humans are defending Zion, the effects are truly epic, but it goes on too long, and Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are not even involved, distancing the film further from the 1999 original.

The best thing about the first Matrix film was its notion of a world not unlike our own filled with ordinary people going about their daily lives, but who were really part of a gigantic program. Even Neo began the film as one of these people, until he was made aware of the reality. This was a terrific concept, which the sequels failed to carry forward. In Reloaded our heroes often ventured into the Matrix, but it no longer bore much of a relation to the world we know.

Both the sequels suffer from the presence of far too many minor characters, feeling like an attempt to ape the ensemble cast of Lord of the Rings. The trouble is that most of these characters are hardly fleshed out at all. Whereas Reloaded used numerous kung fu sequences inside the Matrix to distract attention from the slightly tedious main plot, Revolutions is forced to tie up this plot, and it has only 2 hours in which to accomplish this, an almost impossible task.

Revolutions is not a terrible film, but it is just another blockbuster, and most of the originality which marked out The Matrix has been lost. It's a shame the series had to end in such a conventional way.