the crash movie review

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"Crash" tells interlocking stories of whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless, all defined in one way or another by racism. All are victims of it, and all are guilty it. Sometimes, yes, they rise above it, although it is never that simple. Their negative impulses may be instinctive, their positive impulses may be dangerous, and who knows what the other person is thinking?

The result is a movie of intense fascination; we understand quickly enough who the characters are and what their lives are like, but we have no idea how they will behave, because so much depends on accident. Most movies enact rituals; we know the form and watch for variations. "Crash" is a movie with free will, and anything can happen. Because we care about the characters, the movie is uncanny in its ability to rope us in and get us involved.

"Crash" was directed by Paul Haggis , whose screenplay for " Million Dollar Baby " led to Academy Awards. It connects stories based on coincidence, serendipity, and luck, as the lives of the characters crash against one another other like pinballs. The movie presumes that most people feel prejudice and resentment against members of other groups, and observes the consequences of those feelings.

One thing that happens, again and again, is that peoples' assumptions prevent them from seeing the actual person standing before them. An Iranian ( Shaun Toub ) is thought to be an Arab, although Iranians are Persian. Both the Iranian and the white wife of the district attorney ( Sandra Bullock ) believe a Mexican-American locksmith ( Michael Pena ) is a gang member and a crook, but he is a family man.

A black cop ( Don Cheadle ) is having an affair with his Latina partner ( Jennifer Esposito ), but never gets it straight which country she's from. A cop ( Matt Dillon ) thinks a light-skinned black woman ( Thandie Newton ) is white. When a white producer tells a black TV director ( Terrence Dashon Howard ) that a black character "doesn't sound black enough," it never occurs to him that the director doesn't "sound black," either. For that matter, neither do two young black men ( Larenz Tate and Ludacris), who dress and act like college students, but have a surprise for us.

You see how it goes. Along the way, these people say exactly what they are thinking, without the filters of political correctness. The district attorney's wife is so frightened by a street encounter that she has the locks changed, then assumes the locksmith will be back with his "homies" to attack them. The white cop can't get medical care for his dying father, and accuses a black woman at his HMO with taking advantage of preferential racial treatment. The Iranian can't understand what the locksmith is trying to tell him, freaks out, and buys a gun to protect himself. The gun dealer and the Iranian get into a shouting match.

I make this sound almost like episodic TV, but Haggis writes with such directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that the characters seem real and plausible after only a few words. His cast is uniformly strong; the actors sidestep cliches and make their characters particular.

For me, the strongest performance is by Matt Dillon, as the racist cop in anguish over his father. He makes an unnecessary traffic stop when he thinks he sees the black TV director and his light-skinned wife doing something they really shouldn't be doing at the same time they're driving. True enough, but he wouldn't have stopped a black couple or a white couple. He humiliates the woman with an invasive body search, while her husband is forced to stand by powerless, because the cops have the guns -- Dillon, and also an unseasoned rookie ( Ryan Phillippe ), who hates what he's seeing but has to back up his partner.

That traffic stop shows Dillon's cop as vile and hateful. But later we see him trying to care for his sick father, and we understand why he explodes at the HMO worker (whose race is only an excuse for his anger). He victimizes others by exercising his power, and is impotent when it comes to helping his father. Then the plot turns ironically on itself, and both of the cops find themselves, in very different ways, saving the lives of the very same TV director and his wife. Is this just manipulative storytelling? It didn't feel that way to me, because it serves a deeper purpose than mere irony: Haggis is telling parables, in which the characters learn the lessons they have earned by their behavior.

Other cross-cutting Los Angeles stories come to mind, especially Lawrence Kasdan's more optimistic " Grand Canyon " and Robert Altman's more humanistic " Short Cuts ." But "Crash" finds a way of its own. It shows the way we all leap to conclusions based on race -- yes, all of us, of all races, and however fair-minded we may try to be -- and we pay a price for that. If there is hope in the story, it comes because as the characters crash into one another, they learn things, mostly about themselves. Almost all of them are still alive at the end, and are better people because of what has happened to them. Not happier, not calmer, not even wiser, but better. Then there are those few who kill or get killed; racism has tragedy built in.

Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people. I don't expect "Crash" to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves. The movie contains hurt, coldness and cruelty, but is it without hope? Not at all. Stand back and consider. All of these people, superficially so different, share the city and learn that they share similar fears and hopes. Until several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth never saw anybody who didn't look like them. They were not racist because, as far as they knew, there was only one race. You may have to look hard to see it, but "Crash" is a film about progress.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Crash (2005)

Rated R for language, sexual content and some violence

112 minutes

Sandra Bullock as Jean

Don Cheadle as Graham

Matt Dillon as Officer Ryan

Jennifer Esposito as Ria

William Fichtner as Flanagan

Brendan Fraser as Rick

Terrence Dashon Howard as Cameron

Ludacris as Anthony

Directed by

• Paul Haggis
• Robert Moresco

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Best-Picture Winner Crash Just Turned 15. Is Anybody Celebrating?

By K. Austin Collins

“I believe that occasionally a film comes along that can have an influence for the better, and maybe even change us a little,” wrote the late Roger Ebert in 2006 . The line comes not from his (famous? infamous?) four-star review of Paul Haggis’s Crash , but rather from a follow-up on the movie written months later in response to fellow critics—a good number of whom had already been talking a little too much shit about the film, months before a surprised Jack Nicholson announced it as 2006’s best-picture winner and launched Crash -hating as a competitive sport.

The movie, an intricate, message-first melodrama of racial and social animus set in contemporary Los Angeles, was Ebert’s number one pick of the year. It appeared on a handful of other major lists too: Entertainment Weekly , Rolling Stone , Time , the Washington Post , LA Weekly . So Ebert was hardly alone in loving the film, which had the added public appeal of a broad, well-known cast: Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Ludacris, Terrence Howard, Brendan Fraser, Ryan Phillippe, Jennifer Esposito, Thandie Newton, Michael Peña, Larenz Tate, Shaun Toub.

Had he been the movie’s only critical defender, Ebert still wouldn’t have been alone in his affection. Crash grossed $98 million worldwide on a $6.5 million budget thanks, in no insignificant part, to word of mouth. That’s an especially impressive take for what is essentially a mid-budget adult drama, the kind of film Hollywood had allegedly stopped making even in 2004. It’s all the more impressive for a movie whose development history began with every financier in America and Canada turning it down —and later, one imagines, regretting that decision.

When you add those Academy Awards to the mix (wins for editing, original screenplay and picture; nominations for Dillon as supporting actor, Haggis’s direction, and Bird York’s song “In the Deep”), Crash seems like a respected and fondly remembered movie, if not a universally beloved one. But that would be a surprise to anyone who’s gotten into an argument about the movie since its release 15 years ago this week. Its reputation has been nothing if not fraught.

Even the Academy doesn’t stand by the film anymore. In 2015, a Hollywood Reporter poll of “hundreds” of Academy members showed that, were they voting in 2015, the 2005 best-picture trophy would have gone to that year’s ostensibly more progressive choice: Ang Lee’s gay cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain . (I take that poll with a grain of salt, by the way, because the Academy grows its membership yearly and gradually becomes a different voting body.) Haggis himself doesn’t necessarily back the criticisms, but he has conceded that his directorial debut shouldn’t have won. “Was it the best film of the year? I don’t think so,” he told Hitfix, now Uproxx, in 2015 . “There were great films that year. Good Night, and Good Luck —amazing film. Capote —terrific film. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain , great film. And [Steven] Spielberg’s Munich . I mean, please, what a year.”

Public opinion is a wild, vacillating, highly contingent thing, and history’s winners get the strictest scrutiny. It’s pretty easy to imagine a world in which Crash didn’t beat Brokeback for best picture, and was instead consigned to that annually enlarged list of Oscar nominees few of us think about post-Oscars—and even fewer of us can recall seeing, even if we liked them at the time. (I’d name names but, to my point, I don’t remember them.) It’s easy too to imagine a world in which Crash won in a lower-stakes fight and didn’t have to bear the overwrought social implications of its win over “the gay cowboy movie.” Crash versus Argo ? That would have been another Oscar year.

In that alternative universe, would Crash still have been ranked 90 (out of 92) on Vulture’s recent ranking of every best-picture winner ? (How it ranked below Out of Africa —which is worse if only because it’s so dehumanizingly boring —is beyond me.) Without the misbegotten Oscar fanfare and subsequent public discourse to fan him on, would Ta-Nehisi Coates still have called Crash “the worst movie of the decade” ? Would an anniversary of the movie’s release even merit attention?

I vote no. Bad movies happen to good people every week, to the Academy every year, and to me practically every day. Nevertheless, we persist. I would sooner say Crash is a gratingly mediocre movie than an irredeemably bad one. Actually, I would sooner say nothing at all, because, in truth, Crash is a movie that I almost never think about.

Rewatching it recently, though, brought me back—back to the sound of Cheadle intoning, in the film’s opening moments, that sometimes people crash into each other to feel connection. (This is his daring philosophical insight into the vehicular incident he survived just moments before.) Back to the audio-visual stench of the film’s broad moral posturing, every one of its scenes an excuse for discourse on the film’s prevailing themes, which get stuffed into the mouths of people whose problems—bad-faith political maneuvering, colorism, sexual assault—are more real than even this movie seems to realize. Back to the sight—the truly splendid, shocking sight—of Sandra Bullock being pushed down the stairs by a screenplay, for no better reason than to engineer an astonishing closing line to the Latina maid who saves her, though she’s never before treated her maid like a person: “You’re the best friend I’ve got.” A better movie would have known that this is a laugh line.

None of this obscures the reasons Crash won best picture, which to me have never really been so obscure. Utter shock at its win, which apparently persists to the present, overlooks the hints scattered among the tea leaves.

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True, Haggis’s movie was only the second film to win best picture at the Oscars without having been nominated in either best-picture category at the Golden Globes. Yet it did win outstanding performance from a cast at the SAG Awards, the closest category the acting guild has to a “best picture” and, importantly, a not-unreliable indicator that a film has momentum. (See also: Shakespeare in Love triumphing over Saving Private Ryan at the SAGs before it clobbered the Spielberg favorite at the Oscars .) And despite its lack of love from the Golden Globes, Haggis’s film did get a best-picture nod overseas, from the BAFTAs, where it earned a heaping nine nominations overall—more than even Hollywood was willing to throw its way and, perhaps tellingly, just as many nominations as Brokeback .

So why did Crash beat Brokeback on Oscar night? Homophobia has routinely been presented as a viable conclusion, and I don’t doubt that it played a role. But I think Crash won because of what it is, what it does, rather than because of what Brokeback isn’t. In a Vulture oral history from a few years ago , producer Cathy Schulman recounted reading the script for the first time while ignoring her black mailman, who was trying to get her attention. She realized, in that moment, that she was Sandra Bullock: “I’m thinking, I’m a bitch. I’m a racist. I felt guilty. He was just trying to be nice, and I was a bitch! I felt really callous in that moment; I felt the same kind of separation from my fellow human being that was in the script.”

This must be the change in people that Ebert says the film inspired. I wouldn’t call it a change; as world views go, it certainly isn’t inspired. But it’s what I think many people felt, feel, when they watch this movie, which thrives on the chaos of its connections, its eagerness to flip the switch. One moment a black character is righteously sermonizing about the realities of gentrification and white fear; the next, he’s hijacking a car. This is irony befitting satire, but Crash , bless it, plays it straight.

Crash and Brokeback seem to represent opposite poles on the limited spectrum of Hollywood progressivism. Neither is as radical as its defenders would claim, just as Hollywood progressivism isn’t nearly as liberal, really, as its proponents would claim. But Brokeback , at least, was a legitimate cultural breakthrough for its time, assuming that we take the Hollywood mainstream and the box office to be the only significant measures of cultural breakthroughs. In the specific and discrete context of capital- H Hollywood, which teemed from the start with gay artists and stars and yet has very rarely taken queerness on as a mainstream subject, Brokeback is a watershed. If we look beyond Hollywood to the long history of queer and more often than not underground films, two gay cowboys spit-lubing in a camping tent is probably more comfortably labeled “pulp” than progressivism. It’s old news.

But Brokeback , with its high-profile director and stars and its legitimate box office success, got more eyes on the issue than those more radical works (whose audiences were smaller because they were more political)—and did more, in a country that had yet to even sanction gay marriage, to normalize what had so often been marginalized in American media. It didn’t need to win best picture for this material impact to be notable. Its box office receipts handled that well enough on their own, opening the door to more projects in a similar vein and a noticeable mainstreaming of LGBT—or at least LG—culture.

The Academy was expected to prove, for its own sake, that it was willing to play a decisive part in that normalization. Instead, it chose Crash —the less-progressive candidate, you could say. Both movies are ultimately efforts to humanize. Both do so familiarly. Brokeback , for example, is a romance rendered impossible by social circumstance: a very legible, often engaging premise for a movie. And Crash , for all its interweaving and cross-cutting and climactic spiritualism, is a throwback to a familiar strain of Oscar-friendly, liberal message movie—in which the “message,” often, is that people are complicated, goodness is relative, and evil is not a terminal condition. It dramatizes racism the same way that classical Hollywood storytelling has long dramatized things: through a sense of character and intention and a guise of psychological realism, through arcs and archetypes, through a slow climb toward third-act revelations about who people really are as evinced by the things they’ve achieved, the changes they’ve undergone by film’s end.

In Crash and in the movies of its ilk, social ills are all interpersonal and individual—not systemic. Most importantly, they’re not insurmountable, as films like American History X , with its tale of a neo-Nazi murderer turning a new leaf in prison, have labored to suggest. When Crash does get systemic—when, for example, a black police chief decides to overlook a complaint about misconduct against Dillon’s cop with a “poor me” speech about the sacrifices he had to make to become a black police chief—it gets goofy.

In films like Crash , racism isn’t a matter of who you are , what you believe, or how you fundamentally understand the world. You aren’t racist, even if you do racist things —because you could just as well learn to do better. Like Dillon’s cop saving a black woman he’d previously assaulted from a fiery blaze, you could have that racism overridden by more virtuous instincts. Because people, you’ll recall, crash into each other .

It isn’t always clear, in Crash and other less-than-great message movies, how the prejudicial social systems that encourage these collisions and make them inevitable, intractable, and oft-repeated fit into this equation. Nor do these films always own up to the unsubtle defensiveness of their position. Someone, somewhere apparently said that racist cops can’t also care for their dying fathers, or that rich white women can’t also be legitimately shaken after a carjacking. Someone apparently said that racist people are just racist—not people—so that the addition of a few human qualities, like fear or paternal love, can seem like dramatic complication.

None of that scans, really. Yet I remain unconvinced that we should care so much—that every time a Green Book triumphs , we have to invoke the Crash controversy.

There’s a character in Haggis’s film, played by Ludacris, who comes off like a white screenwriter’s attempt to “do Spike Lee. ” Thankfully, I have Spike Lee’s actual movies to turn to instead. Sandra Bullock’s entitled, prejudiced politician’s wife isn’t endemic to Crash , either; melodramas, especially from the age of the “women’s picture,” have plenty to say about the prejudicial undercurrents of white domestic life. So, again: I’m all set. The inclination, 15 years after its release, is to assume that Crash ’s win matters. Really, as with most things, it only matters as much as we let it.

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K. austin collins is a film critic for *vanity fair.*.

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Admit It, ‘Crash’ Has Influenced a Generation of Stories About Race

Despite being the subject of ridicule these days, the Best Picture–winning ensemble left a pronounced mark on the way film and television explores race and identity

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Last year, I watched Lovecraft Country , and by the eighth episode, I couldn’t stop thinking about Crash . A few weeks ago, I started watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the second episode got me thinking about ... Crash . Thirty minutes into Antebellum , I was thinking about Crash . Them ? Crash . Slave Play ? Crash . Boogie ? Crash . Malcolm & Marie ? I see Cameron and Christine from Crash .

There are modern race dramas, such as Get Out and Small Axe , which launch artful interrogations of racial dynamics; and then there are modern race dramas that, in their melodramatic excess, for the most part just remind me of Crash . Despite its dismal reputation these days, Crash may well be the most influential film in my various streaming queues.

Crash tracks more than a dozen characters, intertwined by racialized encounters with each other, for a rough 24 hours in Los Angeles. Crash pits whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Iranians in a dog-eat-dog struggle for validation. If only, Crash proposes, these people could slow down and perceive one another beyond the level of stereotype and resentment. Crash isn’t just a movie about race. It’s a movie about pluralism, distinguished—and, I’ll argue, overburdened—by its ensemble structure, designed to cram a wide variety of racial perspective into one potent fable. Director Paul Haggis says he set out to challenge the progressive hypocrisies in pluralist bastions such as Los Angeles. “It was a social experiment,” Haggis told The Huffington Post a few years ago. “I wanted to fuck with people.”

Released in May 2005, Crash cleaned up at the box office, earning nearly $100 million worldwide against a budget of just $6.5 million. It was also a relative critical success, particularly in the eyes of the Academy, which nominated the film for six Oscars, including Best Picture. Crash went on to win that award, in addition to Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Roger Ebert lauded the movie upon its release. “I don’t expect Crash to work any miracles,” Ebert wrote , “but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves.” But a curious development happened over time: Crash encountered critical backlash. “I’ve never actively hated a movie as much as Crash ,” Gene Demby wrote in one retrospective. “Its basic premise seems to be that personal animus is the well from which racism springs, and that absolution from racism can be found in being violently forced to relinquish one’s bitterness.” Ta-Nehisi Coates described the movie and its great acclaim as “the apotheosis of a kind of unthinking, incurious, nihilistic, multiculturalism.”

In the 16 years since the release of Crash , the U.S. has rushed through a series of milestones in race relations: a Black president, a new chapter in the civil rights movement, a white backlash, a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and now a national uptick in violence against Asian Americans. Hollywood has answered these shifts with new, hard-sought commitments to diversified casting and diversified stories. I never thought I’d live to see Warner Bros. distributing a star-studded movie about Fred Hampton. Now Crash stands—and decays—as a monument to a previous, naive phase. But more than any other movie about race, Crash has left a deep and abiding impression on big-budget entertainment with anti-racist convictions. With each passing year, Crash seems a bit more ridiculous in hindsight, and yet new dramas seem nonetheless determined to propagate the movie’s worst faults.

For its first 30 minutes or so, Crash introduces the many stereotypes that overpopulate the movie: the bigoted white police sergeant, John (Matt Dillon), and his naive junior partner, Tom (Ryan Phillippe); the Black carjackers, Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter (Larenz Tate); the fearful white socialite, Jean (Sandra Bullock); the light-skinned Black Hollywood couple, Cameron (Terrence Howard) and Christine (Thandiwe Newton); the tattooed Latino locksmith, Daniel (Michael Peña); and several others. Gradually, Crash subverts and reforms the stereotypes, the characters forced to confront each other in situations that put their prejudices to the test. Race is, by design, Haggis’s one and only idea about any of these characters. Crash betrays its heartfelt performances and some clever character drama with ridiculous contrivances to raise racial tension—the one and only motivation for anything—in every character arc. Take, for instance, Graham (Don Cheadle) and Ria (Jennifer Esposito), two police colleagues engaged in an affair. They’re having sex when Graham takes a phone call from his mother. Graham, a Black man, then cuts the call short by telling his mother, “I’m having sex with a white woman,” before hanging up. Ria, who is Puerto Rican and Salvadoran, objects to being described as a white woman. Graham then jokingly regards Ria as Mexican and wonders why Mexicans park their cars on their lawns.

In interviews, Haggis gets very defensive about this particular scene. He says he intended the race humor in the earlier parts of the movie to disarm the audience and sow misdirection about the movie’s dramatic bearings. It makes sense on a conceptual level. But what is this scene? Was there really no better way to introduce Graham’s mother while raising the racial tension in Graham and Ria’s relationship? Crash , at every turn, veers toward absurdity in order to illustrate bigotry—a substance that’s often a lot more variable and nuanced than the characters in this movie.

Cameron and Christine in particular resemble the couple in Malcolm & Marie , starring John David Washington and Zendaya. In the movie, Malcolm and Marie have an overwrought argument about racial condescension in film criticism, and they never seem to have a genuine romance so much as they have an ugly, running discourse. Malcolm and Marie’s clashes more or less resemble the moment when Cameron and Christine turn on each other, in a vindictive argument about assimilation, after John profiles Cameron and sexually assaults Christine at a traffic stop. That particular excess in Crash —John sexually assaulting Christine—gets me thinking about Antebellum , starring Janelle Monáe. Antebellum follows Black captives on a remote plantation run by violent white Confederate antebellum reenactors, including a man who repeatedly rapes Monáe’s character, Eden. This is all in service of some wildly overstated point about how much hasn’t changed in Black-white relations (since slavery).

Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gotten a bit busy and ridiculous in its characterization of racial strife. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier pairs Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) in a buddy-dramedy struggle to succeed the retired Captain America. Naturally, Sam succeeding Captain America would stir some tension; Sam is Black, and Captain America, played by Chris Evans in the movies, isn’t just white. He is, or seems, prohibitively white. Here you have the basis for some decent race drama. But then The Falcon and the Winter Soldier lurches to tedious extremes. A bank denies Sam’s application for a home loan, a commentary on disparities and discrimination in lending. Sam and Bucky meet Isaiah Bradley, a disgruntled Black veteran of the Korean War, and his backstory turns out to be a commentary on the Tuskegee Study. Moments later, the police profile Sam as a potential criminal nuisance to Bucky. Taken individually these are sensible bits of racialized drama. But taken all together, and lacking any coherence or depth, they suggest there’s a cringeworthy shortcut being taken in a show that’s otherwise about a robot bird man and his grunge sidekick.

Among the many characters in Crash , Jean seems truest to Haggis’s mission “to bust liberals.” She’s also one of the more sensible characterizations in this largely senseless movie. She’s a wealthy, white woman who second-guesses her prejudices in the moment before the carjacking and then resents her hesitation after the fact. Jean sulks at home, ragging on her housekeeper, Maria, until the larger truth dawns on her in a dour phone conversation with a friend. “I am angry all the time,” Jean says, “and I don’t know why.” Otherwise, Crash employs a certain bluntness, verging on cartoonishness, in announcing each character’s prejudices despite the supposed sophistication of the more progressive characters, and often in wildly incongruous contexts. The very worst case is Tom. He spends the whole movie disgusted with John’s stereotyping before risking his life and career to make amends with Cameron, only to transform into a vengeful redneck blasting country music as soon as the hitchhiking Peter settles into his car in the final act. Who is this character and where did he come from all of a sudden? He seems born from Haggis’s inability to translate the variety of his cast into a variety of characterizations.

There’s one recent example that struck me as the most reprehensible fiction I’ve seen in a while. Lovecraft Country stages its eighth episode, “Jig-a-Bobo,” during the mourning for Emmett Till. The mourning brings two characters, the Black woman Ruby and the white woman Christina, into a bizarre, anachronistic confrontation about white fragility. It culminates with Christina hiring two men—no, I’m not making this up—to reenact Till’s murder on her. This isn’t a brave racial reckoning nor a subversive character drama. This is Crash .

I don’t even hate these things. The several episodes of Lovecraft Country before “Jig-a-Bobo” are great! But I fear a generation of storytellers who should know better—the sort of storytellers who would happily ridicule Crash— have learned all the wrong lessons from this ludicrous movie. Crash used bigotry as a shortcut. Whatever strong feelings you might have about the characters (as thin as they are) are for the most part due to their situation in a larger racial conflict. It’s certainly not due to the artful particulars of their character development. There’s only one great scene—well, apart from all the great scenes with Anthony and Peter together—in Crash . It’s a scene I mentioned earlier, and it’s the simplest scene in the movie: Jean at home alone, pacing her bedroom, venting on the phone to her friend, saying, “I am angry all the time, and I don’t know why.” It’s a modest, but poignant resolution for a character who can learn and grow only so much in a story spanning 24 hours. It’s a small truth with real insight into the nature of prejudice at the personal level. But no one remembers this scene. They remember the goofiest, melodramatic moments in Crash . They remember the cringe. And it shows.

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FILM REVIEW

Bigotry as the Outer Side of Inner Angst

By A.o. Scott

• May 6, 2005

What kind of movie is "Crash"? It belongs to a genre that has been flourishing in recent years -- at least in the esteem of critics -- but that still lacks a name. A provisional list of examples might include "Monster's Ball," "House of Sand and Fog" and "21 Grams." In each of these films, as in "Crash," Americans from radically different backgrounds are brought together by a grim serendipity that forces them, or at least the audience, to acknowledge their essential connectedness.

The look of these movies and the rough authenticity of their locations create an atmosphere of naturalism that is meant to give force to their rigorously pessimistic view of American life. The performances, often by some of the finest screen actors working today, have the dense texture and sober discipline that we associate with realism. But to classify these movies as realistic would be misleading, as the stories they tell are, in nearly every respect, preposterous, and they tend to be governed less by the spirit of observation than by superstition.

This is not necessarily bad, and some of these movies are very good indeed. But in approaching "Crash," we should be more than usually cautious about mistaking its inhabitants -- residents of Los Angeles of various hues, temperaments and occupations -- for actual human beings. This may not be easy, for they are played by people of such graven, complex individuality as Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle and Terrence Howard, as well as by less established but equally gifted actors like Michael Pena and Chris Bridges (better known to the world by his rap name, Ludacris).

Their characters -- and the dozen or so others whose lives intersect in the course of an exceedingly eventful day and a half -- may have names, addresses, families and jobs, but they are, at bottom, ciphers in an allegorical scheme dreamed up by Paul Haggis, the screenwriter (most recently of Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby"), here making his directorial debut.

As he demonstrated to galvanizing effect in the "Million Dollar Baby" script, Mr. Haggis is not unduly concerned with subtlety. At a time when ambitious movies are dominated by knowing cleverness and showy sensation, he makes a case for blunt, earnest emotion, and shows an admirable willingness to risk sentimentality and cliché in the pursuit of genuine feeling. Many of the scenes in "Crash" unfold with great dramatic power, even when they lack a credible narrative or psychological motive.

Mr. Haggis's evident sincerity and intelligence are reflected in the conviction of the cast, and may also leave an impression on the audience. So much feeling, so much skill, so much seriousness, such an urgent moral agenda -- all of this must surely answer our collective hunger for a good movie, or even a great one, about race and class in a modern American city.

Not even close. "Crash" writes its themes in capital letters -- Race, Class, Life, Fate -- and then makes them the subjects of a series of speeches and the pivot points for a succession of clumsy reversals. The first speech, which doubles as introductory voice-over narration, is by Mr. Cheadle's character, a detective named Graham, addressing his partner (and lover), Ria (Jennifer Esposito), after their car has been in a minor accident. He takes the event as a metaphor for the disjunctive, isolated character of life in Los Angeles, while she insists that it is merely a literal, physical occurrence that requires a practical response.

It does not take long to figure out whose side Mr. Haggis is on. Metaphor hangs in the California air like smog (or like the snow that is incongruously falling on the Hollywood Hills). The other major element in the atmosphere is intolerance. Ria, who is Hispanic, climbs out of the car and confronts the other driver, an Asian-American woman, and before long their argument has descended into racial name-calling. This sets the pattern for just about every other conversation in the movie.

In the next scene, which takes place earlier on the previous day, a hot-tempered Iranian shopkeeper is insulted by the owner of a gun store, who calls him "Osama." And so it goes, slur by slur, until we come full circle, to the original accident, after which a few lingering questions are resolved.

In the meantime, quite a lot happens. Guns are pulled, cars are stolen, children are endangered, cars flip over, and many angry, hurtful words are exchanged, all of it threaded together by Mr. Haggis's quick, emphatic direction and Mark Isham's maundering electronic score.

Mr. Haggis is eager to show the complexities of his many characters, which means that each one will show exactly two sides. A racist white police officer will turn out to be physically courageous and devoted to his ailing father; his sensitive white partner will engage in some deadly racial profiling; a young black man who sees racial profiling everywhere will turn out to be a carjacker; a wealthy, mild-mannered black man will pull out a gun and start screaming. No one is innocent. There's good and bad in everyone. (The exception is Mr. Pena's character, a Mexican-American locksmith who is an island of quiet decency in a sea of howling prejudice and hypocrisy).

That these bromides count as insights may say more about the state of the American civic conversation than about Mr. Haggis's limitations as a storyteller, and there is no doubt that he is trying to dig into the unhappiness and antagonism that often simmer below the placid surface of everyday life. "I'm angry all the time, and I don't know why," says Jean (Sandra Bullock), the wife of the city's district attorney (Brendan Fraser), the day after their S.U.V. has been stolen at gunpoint.

Her condition is all but universal in Mr. Haggis's city, but its avenues of expression are overwrought and implausible. The idea that bigotry is the public face of private unhappiness -- the notion that we lash out at people we don't know as a form of displaced revenge against the more familiar sources of our misery -- is an interesting one, but the failure of "Crash" is that it states its ideas, again and again, without realizing them in coherent dramatic form.

It is at once tangled and threadbare; at times you have trouble keeping track of all the characters, but they run into one another with such frequency that, by the end, you start to think that the population of Los Angeles County must number in the mid-two figures -- all of it strangers who hate one another on sight.

So what kind of a movie is "Crash"? A frustrating movie: full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb.

"Crash" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has violence, strong language (including many racial slurs) and a brief sex scene.

Crash Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Paul Haggis; written by Mr. Haggis and Bobby Moresco, based on a story by Mr. Haggis; director of photography, J. Michael Muro; edited by Hughes Winborne; music by Mark Isham; production designer, Laurence Bennett; produced by Cathy Schulman, Don Cheadle, Bob Yari, Mark R. Harris, Mr. Moresco and Mr. Haggis; released by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 107 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Sandra Bullock (Jean), Don Cheadle (Graham), Matt Dillon (Officer Ryan), Jennifer Esposito (Ria), Brendan Fraser (Rick), Terrence Howard (Cameron), Chris Bridges (Anthony), Thandie Newton (Christine) and Michael Pena (Daniel).

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Crash review – Cronenberg's auto eroticism still has impact

The controversy surrounding the original release of this dark exploration of sexy car accidents now seems quaintly outdated – but the film holds up well

I n 1996, David Cronenberg ’s movie Crash, now rereleased in 4K digital, became the subject of the last great “banning” controversy for a new film in Britain. His vision of the erotic car crash got brimstone denunciations from the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail. This delayed its BBFC certificate, and Westminster council issued a solemn edict forbidding it in West End cinemas.

But in the 21st century, the press appetite for denouncing shocking films just seemed to vanish, overnight becoming the quaint tradition of a bygone age, perhaps because of a belated realisation that these campaigns were destined to fail and didn’t sell papers, and that, increasingly, nothing sold papers in any case as newsprint lost ground to the internet’s oceanic swell, in which all these films could easily be found. Even The Human Centipede sequel’s brief failure to get a certificate was a formality, laughed or shrugged at. The urge to censor or cancel – as with, say, Maïmouna Dourcouré’s Cuties – has migrated to social media, but even this seems to have no bearing on seeing controversial films if you want.

The controversy has aged badly, but Crash itself holds up well. It isn’t Cronenberg’s best work and can’t reproduce the icily macabre chill of JG Ballard’s prose in the original 1973 novel . There is no walk-on role for Elizabeth Taylor as there is in the book and it’s a shame the soundtrack couldn’t have used the great pop single, inspired by Crash – Warm Leatherette, recorded by the Normal in 1978 (“Hear the crashing steel / Feel the steering wheel”). But it is still deeply strange and risky; particularly, it risks being laughed at, and there is a definite, tiny grain of Razzie absurdity that is a part of its weirdly hypnotic high-porn torpor.

James Spader plays the drolly named James Ballard, a film director in a jaded open relationship with his partner Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger). After a near-fatal car crash close to the airport, Ballard meets the beautiful survivor from the other car in hospital: Helen, played by Holly Hunter . He also encounters a man called Vaughan (Elias Koteas) who is photographing their grisly wounds. Vaughan introduces them to his cult, which celebrates the eroticism of car crashes, and for a crowd of devotees he stages pornified drag-race events on quiet roads: secret Hollywood-Babylon-type re-enactments of famous car wrecks that killed people such as James Dean and Jayne Mansfield. Vaughan presides over a sexual black mass that fetishises the victims’ wounds, their calipers, bandages and surgical stitches and imagines them as part of the crushed metal of the doomed cars. Ballard, Helen and Catherine become increasingly obsessed with the sexual thrill of the car crash.

Being in that initial wreck is for Ballard the equivalent of being bitten by a radioactive spider. Now he (like others) is granted the perv superpower of seeing the sensuality of technology, and especially the dark ecstasy of seeing sleek technology go haywire, seeing how the human form fuses with this futurist world of glass and metal and gasoline in the act of crashing. (I found myself thinking of the Hammer House of Horror TV episode called The Thirteenth Reunion from 1980, about people whose behaviour is shaped by having been passengers together in a plane crash.)

Crash is still creepy, still menacing, still hypnotic, and it is still dedicated, in its freaky way, to the ideal of eroticism, to just drifting from erotic scene to erotic scene without much need for story. But Crash is no longer so contemporary. Even in the late 90s, it didn’t quite have the zeitgeisty charge of the book, which had come out 20 years previously. Cars themselves (and certainly airports) aren’t really as sexy and urgent as they could plausibly be presented by Ballard, as part of his eerily disquieting atrocity exhibition of modern life. Cars themselves have become far more boring and reliable and safe in our culture. Nowadays, the airbag of banality is deployed.

Interestingly, Ben Wheatley’s movie version of Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise , about the psychopathology of living in a tall building (a cousin to Crash), sees it more as a period piece, a surreal twist on 70s design that is very strange, very Sanderson. Maybe that is how any new adaptation of Crash would have to work. But Cronenberg’s film still has a metal-crunching impact.

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‘the crash’: film review.

A stock-market manipulator must save the world economy from economic terrorists in Aram Rappaport's would-be financial thriller 'The Crash.'

By THR Staff

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Old to-catch-a-thief cliches get dusted off and mangled in The Crash , Aram Rappaport’s macroeconomic technodrama in which a stock-market hacker is recruited by the feds to protect the New York Stock Exchange from unknown terrorists. No film in which the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (played here by Christopher McDonald) is the most colorful character can be said to have much grip on reality, but this one is further off the mark than even that suggests; theatrically and on video, its stock will tank quickly enough to test the reflexes of a high-frequency trading algorithm.

Frank Grillo makes an unsympathetic leading turn as the onetime financial-software star currently facing charges for hacking the NYSE. When the government gets word that a more nefarious attack is imminent, the secretary of the Treasury (Mary McCormack) decides he’s the only one who can protect America’s economy. He assembles his crack team of computer experts, one of whom is secretly having an affair with Grillo’s cancer-struck daughter. The movie vastly overestimates our interest in this subplot — perhaps because it understands that the rest of its action boils down to one long computer-networking conversation.

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Release date: Jan 13, 2017

In a film whose negotiations and planning sessions rarely happen in any place you’d expect (or believe), the biggest implausibility of all occurs when Grillo declares that, in order to make his defense plan work, “we need 5 percent of the internet — the fastest 5 percent”: In response, his government handlers take him to an abandoned barge full of servers that were assembled for a post-9/11 contingency plan. Because dusty, 16-year-old computers are just the tool every genius hacker dreams of.

Several respectable actors offer dicey performances here, but Rappaport’s screenplay is the real villain, expecting thin references to real-world financial peril to paper over gaping holes in credibility and plain-old drama.

Production companies: Windward Entertainment, Cloud Factor Collective

Distributor: Vertical Entertainment

Cast: Frank Grillo , Mary McCormack, Christopher McDonald, John Leguizamo , Ed Westwick , Minnie Driver, AnnaSophia Robb

Director-Screenwriter-Editor: Aram Rappaport

Producers: Aaron Becker, Gabriel Cowan, Isaac LaMell , Atit Shah, Hilary Shor , Peter Shuldiner , John Suits

Executive producers: Baird Kellogg, Shane Mandes , Regina von Flemming

Director of photography: Matt Turve

Production designer: Dawn R. Ferry

Costume designer: Alexandra Mandelkorn

Composer: Guy Moon

R, 84 minutes

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Is Crash Truly the Worst Best Picture?

The high moral drama of the 2006 oscar winner is still infuriating, but also completely watchable..

When you strip away all the surrounding clatter that’s now attached to Crash —the legend of its surprise 2006 Best Picture win, the vicious backlash against its victory—and watch the movie today, what remains striking about this ensemble drama is just how confidently made it is. A filmmaker fully in control of the story he’s telling, Paul Haggis (who also co-wrote the screenplay) wasn’t just tackling racism: He was showing how divisions of all kinds—whether because of age, gender, economic status, or the specific section of Los Angeles where you live—create imperceptible but significant fissures between people. Meticulously crafted and anchored by a superb cast that imbues the film with feeling, Crash is as compulsively watchable now as it was when it was released a decade ago. Also still true: It’s an infuriating, awful movie.

As with plenty of Oscar winners, Crash ’s backstory is now almost as well known as the film’s plot. Most have heard that Haggis, an Emmy-winning television writer who worked on shows as diverse as The Facts of Life and thirtysomething , got carjacked in 1991 after going to a screening of The Silence of the Lambs . Holding onto that traumatic experience for years, he woke up in the middle of the night shortly after 9/11, motivated to hit the keyboard and bang out some initial ideas for what would become Crash , a film that follows the exploits of a disparate cross-section of Angelenos over the course of about 24 hours.  

In many ways, Crash ’s making and its eventual Oscar triumph are an inspiring, unicorn-rare exception to how Hollywood and awards season normally work. Financed independently and shot on a relatively shoestring budget of about $7 million, the project came together because actor Don Cheadle, who signed on as a producer, and his fellow cast members agreed to defer their usual fees, an indication of how passionately those involved felt about the script. Facing off against higher-profile names like George Clooney ( Good Night, and Good Luck ) and Steven Spielberg ( Munich ) for Best Picture—not to mention the critically beloved Ang Lee romantic drama Brokeback Mountain — Crash pulled off the upset. This was a true underdog indie film put out by the then-tiny distributor Lionsgate (long before the company got into the Hunger Games business) that managed to claim the industry’s top prize.

And yet Crash remains one of the most derided Best Picture winners, its name practically emblematic of the Academy’s penchant for wrongheaded choices. Despite generally positive reviews upon release, it’s been called the “ worst movie of the decade ” and the worst Best Picture winner ever. Viewed ten years later, all that vilification isn’t entirely fair. In the age of #OscarsSoWhite, give Crash credit for being one of the few recent Oscar champs to make characters of color not just supporting players but central figures in its drama. And then lament that Haggis’s faith in his earnest, melodramatic material belies how misguided the entire project is.

Moving between Brentwood, Downtown and the Valley, Crash lays out what appear to be separate storylines until it becomes clear how these characters are connected in our tidy little moral drama. Cheadle’s emotionally closed-off cop is actually the older brother of Larenz Tate’s carjacking brother, who unsuspectingly takes a fateful ride with Ryan Phillippe’s honorable rookie cop, who used to be partnered with Matt Dillon’s bigoted policeman, who ends up rescuing Thandie Newton’s resentful wife from a burning car after he’d earlier groped her during a traffic stop. Insisting that we’re all invisibly linked to one another, Crash makes its case by stacking the deck so that nobody in the movie is just some ordinary, average schlub living his life: It’s not a small world but, rather, a rigged one masterminded by Haggis.  

At a moment when race relations and police brutality remain at the forefront of the national conversation, Crash should be as timely as ever. It isn’t. Watching the film now, its depiction of why we can’t all just get along appears maddeningly untethered to the ways Americans actually experience (and, sometimes, help perpetuate) distrust and prejudice. Haggis, who had written the previous year’s Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby , never claimed to solve racism with Crash , but his movie did something almost as offensive: reduced a societal ill to a narrative device, the grist for convoluted dramatic ironies that could be held up to the audience as cutesy indicators of the crazy randomness of modern life in a big city.

Crash is the sort of movie that, after establishing that Phillippe’s good-guy cop recognizes his partner’s racism, will be sure to balance the cosmic scales later, having him murder Tate’s unarmed character after a tragic misunderstanding just to prove the filmmaker’s thesis that, hey, everybody’s a little bit racist. Haggis has characters hurl nasty epithets at one another, as if that’s the most corrosive aspect of discrimination, failing to acknowledge that what’s most destructive aren’t the shouts but, rather, the whispers—the private jokes and long-held prejudices shared by likeminded people behind closed doors and far from public view. Even though I agree with Haggis that we all contain trace elements of intolerance that even we don’t recognize, Crash never dares to contend with racism’s evil, infectious power—instead, it makes its characters’ regrettable actions so uncomplicated that we don’t see our own similar failings up there on the screen. Despite Haggis’s endless attempts to interweave the lives of his seemingly dissimilar individuals, he never bothers to include the audience in his calculus, allowing viewers to stand outside the drama in order to judge it from a safe perspective. The whole world’s terrible, but thank god us fortunate few in the theater are wise enough to know better.

All the anger directed at Crash , perversely, is a reflection of the film’s assured execution. A movie this exasperating could only have been made by true believers, and you see it not only in Haggis’s elaborate, jigsaw-puzzle narrative design but in the mostly fine cast he’s assembled. For every questionable choice—say, tapping eternal lightweight Brendan Fraser to play the city’s district attorney—there’s a discovery of a new talent, like Michael Peña, who shines in an underdeveloped role as a locksmith. Even characters stuck as shards of dull glass in Haggis’s overall mosaic are redeemed by the performances Cheadle, Dillon, and others bring to them. (And it’s illuminating to see Sandra Bullock, trying to create empathy for her shrewish Westside wife, begin to lay the foundation for the dramatic performances that would later lead to her Oscar for The Blind Side .)

Haggis’s actors are so committed that they draw you into the movie’s simplistic spell—they make Crash just compelling enough for its gimmicks to fully enrage you. And what gimmicks they are. Ten years after its Oscar triumph, Crash still contains two of the most unabashedly operatic scenes I’ve ever seen—Dillon’s rescue of Newton from that burning car, and the slow-motion gunpoint showdown between Peña and a Persian shopkeeper (Shaun Toub)—and while both remain risible, Haggis’s investment in their grandiose, ludicrous poetry is something to see. A more moderate, reasonable filmmaker would have had the good sense to ease up on the throttle, but Haggis’s certainty steamrolls over any consideration of half measures.

That conviction must have been part of the reason Crash won Best Picture ten years ago. Academy voters are just like the rest of us: They know we live in a very complex world rife with problems that seem intractable, and sometimes we’d like just a smidgeon of assurance that we’re not all careening off the edge of a cliff. Into that void stepped Crash , a confident drama that didn’t offer to cure racism but at least promised to neutralize it for two hours through the merits of passionate acting and clever filmmaking. But Crash ’s crippling limitations end up serving as a warning against passion, cleverness, and confidence. If not properly monitored, they’re all just forms of self-delusion, the very same quality that allows bigotry and ignorance to flourish. The older I get, the more I prefer not being sure of anything. 

For more on the Academy Awards, listen to the latest episode of the  Grierson & Leitch  podcast:

Grierson & Leitch write about the movies regularly for the  New Republic  and host a podcast on film,  Grierson & Leitch . Follow them on Twitter  @griersonleitch  or visit their site  griersonleitch.com .

Tim Grierson is the senior U.S. critic for  Screen International , chief film critic for  Paste  and a contributing editor at Backstage and MEL.

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The Crash Reviews

Several respectable actors offer dicey performances here, but Rappaport's screenplay is the real villain, expecting thin references to real-world financial peril to paper over gaping holes in credibility and plain-old drama.

Full Review | Jan 16, 2017

Let's just say that Ron Paul supporters will probably embrace The Crash and the theories it comes up with.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 14, 2017

In its strained effort to get your blood boiling, the script trots out trite cliches that diminish the suspense.

Full Review | Jan 13, 2017

Limp financial cyber thriller has lots of strong language.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 13, 2017

These are all cartoon figures out of Frank Capra's most feverish populist nightmares.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 13, 2017

What is The Crash about? First off, it's about Mr. Rappaport's ability to get his film produced, and hats off to him for that, since it couldn't have made much sense on paper and hasn't grown in coherence on screen.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2017

An intriguing if flawed techno-thriller that gets an effective boost from a high-caliber cast.

The more Rappaport tries to pull urgency out of thin air, the harder the movie flounders, finding its title more descriptive of production ambition than dramatic content.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jan 12, 2017

The Crash fumbles between bad diatribe and bad domestic drama, complete with subplots about absent parents and childhood cancer.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jan 12, 2017

Detailed knowledge of the subject and a fine ensemble cast of characters makes for a compelling (albeit wholly fictional) financial thriller.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2017

Too bad The Crash lives up to its inauspicious name.

The film may be too preposterous to take seriously, but at least writer-director Aram Rappaport trains his sights on the right enemies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 9, 2017

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Common sense media reviewers.

Limp financial cyberthriller has lots of strong language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Sometimes the institutions that seem the most trus

Guy starts off concerned only about himself, but h

Tense arguments.

Kissing. Parents have concerned discussions about

Frequent swearing, including "f--k," &qu

Several well-known banks are mentioned by name, in

A few scenes of adults drinking during tense momen

Parents need to know that The Crash is a near future-set cyber thriller about a band of hackers who are trying to prevent a massive electronic attack that could bring down the entire global financial system. Characters swear a lot during tense moments (especially "f--k"), and there are lots of…

Positive Messages

Sometimes the institutions that seem the most trustworthy are in fact not to be trusted at all. A healthy dose of skepticism can be healthy indeed.

Positive Role Models

Guy starts off concerned only about himself, but he eventually realizes there are times when he must step up to do the right thing, even if it has the potential to affect him adversely.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Kissing. Parents have concerned discussions about their 18-year-old daughter seeing a 25-year-old guy.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent swearing, including "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "a--hole," and "douchebag."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Several well-known banks are mentioned by name, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A few scenes of adults drinking during tense moments.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Crash is a near future-set cyber thriller about a band of hackers who are trying to prevent a massive electronic attack that could bring down the entire global financial system. Characters swear a lot during tense moments (especially "f--k"), and there are lots of technical discussions about banking practices and computer networks. There are also some tense arguments and kissing, but the language and complex topic are the main issues of concern. Many familiar faces are in the cast, including Minnie Driver , AnnaSophia Robb , Dianna Agron , and John Leguizamo . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

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What's the Story?

In the near future, when a group of cyber-terrorists threatens to bring down global financial markets, the government turns to Guy Clifton ( Frank Grillo ), a hacker who's about to go to prison. In exchange for a pardon, Clifton agrees to head off THE CRASH, but he starts having second thoughts when he uncovers a clue about the identity of the people behind the scheme.

Is It Any Good?

This movie looks and feels like so many other cyber-thrillers we've seen in recent years, with plenty of busy computer screens and people talking urgently about global financial meltdowns. But pulsing sound effects and colorful images flashing on monitors can't make up for a preposterous plot and flat pacing.

The Crash lurches from one not-at-all dramatic moment to another, and viewers are never given the chance to really get involved with the characters. The team of white-hat hackers is your standard-issue bunch of misfits, but we never learn anything anything about them, while the shadowy government officials pretty much stay shadowy. There really no one to root for, and even after the villains' identity is revealed, it's still hard to care how the movie ends. Not even a dying teen can make viewers root for the people here.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about cyber thrillers and hacking. Cyber attacks are becoming pretty common movie threats. What does The Crash add to the genre?

Parents, talk to your kids about smart, safe online behavior. What does it mean to be a good digital citizen?

Did you notice a lot of swearing in the movie? Do you think it was necessary to tell the story?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 13, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : February 14, 2017
• Cast : Frank Grillo , Minnie Driver , AnnaSophia Robb , Dianna Agron , John Leguizamo
• Director : Aram Rappaport
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Vertical Entertainment
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 84 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language throughout
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Hijacking Of Flight 601’ On Netflix, A Scripted Retelling Of One Of The Longest Hijackings In History

Where to stream:.

• The Hijacking of Flight 601

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Baby Reindeer’ On Netflix, Where A Struggling Comedian Deals With A Very Crafty Stalker

Stream it or skip it: ‘anthracite’ on netflix, about four people trying to solve a ritualistic murder in the french alps, ‘monkey man’ hits during its fight sequences, but gets muddled when it tries to explore religious extremism in india, stream it or skip it: ‘sugar’ on apple tv+, where colin farrell is an old-school private investigator looking for the granddaughter of a legendary movie producer.

Because hijacking stories involve a lot of personalities — the hijackers, the crew, the law enforcement or other person trying to foil the hijackers, etc. — shows and movies surrounding them aren’t just pure thrillers. There’s some attempt at connecting viewers to the people involved, just to raise the stakes and see if they survive the hijacking or not. A new Colombian series is a fictionalized account of a 1973 hijacking that became the longest one in mileage and time in Latin American history.

THE HJACKING OF FLIGHT 601 : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman in a flight attendant’s uniform looks at her wrist, with three dots drawn on it. She has a gun pointed at her head. It alternates with scenes of the same woman, earlier in the timeline, getting ready for work, looking at the blister developing on her heel.

The Gist: “Bogota, 1973.” Edie (Mónica Lopera) is scrambling to get out of her apartment to get to her flight; she is a flight attendant for Aerobolivar, and is due to work on flight 601 out of Bogota. Her three young sons are wreaking havoc, and the babysitter hasn’t arrived. At one point her youngest son locks himself in the bathroom, and when Edie pushes her way in, she accidentally knocks one of his permanent teeth out with the door, prompting an emergency dentist visit.

The airport is buzzing as usual; two men (Alian Devetac, Valentín Villafañe) are in the parking lot; one is holding a cake box, another is taping a gun to his thigh. They have plans for flight 601. After getting weighed by their supervisor Manchola (Marcela Benjumeca) — it is 1973, after all — Aerobolivar’s stewardesses (again, 1973) stride through the terminal, led by the beautiful Bárbara (Ángela Cano). Bárbara makes sure that a rookie stewardess, Marisol (Ilenia Antonini), is projecting the right image, and also gets the brushoff from a married pilot with whom she had a fling.

Edie tries to get Bárbara to cover for her, but Manchola is on to her, and tells her over the phone to arrive on time or lose her job. Edie tries but doesn’t make it, and Bárbara leaves the inexperienced Marisol as the only stewardess on the flight, citing that there’s only 43 passengers and she should be able to handle it. In the cockpit, Capitan Lucena (Christian Tappan) is dealing with an experienced co-pilot, Lequerica (Johan Rivera).

As Edie is dealing with being fired by Manchola, going over her head to Mustafá (Enrique Carriazo), the airline’s newly-promoted director, on whom she has dirt that will help her keep her job, the two men execute their plan. They want the plane refueled in Medellín so they can fly on to Cuba, which is a long haul for the DC-3. When a passenger needs water for his medicine, the hijackers try to get Marisol to do it, but she passes out from fear.

Captain Lucena tells Lequerica to call ground control and lie that the hijackers are requesting another flight attendant when they refuel in Medellín. Despite being fired, Edie is the only one who steps up to board that plane, in exchange for a new contract from Mustafá. When she gets to the airport in Medellín, she’s surprised to find that Bárbara is already there; she wants to help her friend on this flight — and she likes the adventure of being on a hijacked plane. Little do they know that they’ll be on that plane for days.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The most recent show that reminds us of The Hijacking Of Flight 601 is Hijack , despite the fact that Flight 601 takes place 51 years ago and Idris Elba is nowhere to be seen.

Our Take: Created by Camilo Prince and Pablo González, The Hijacking Of Flight 601 tries to thread the needle between being a serious hijacking thriller and being a campy treatise on the hijack-crazy era the early 1970s actually was. The story is based loosely on a hijacking that took place on May 30, 1973 which hopscotched around Latin America for a total of 60 hours, making it the longest in mileage and time in Latin American history.

Perhaps the nature of hijackings back then, when the perpetrators had political motivations and no intentions of hurting anyone, are what led Prince and González to give the show a more personal, soapy treatment. The story is going to be more about the crew in the air and on the ground that did what they could to keep their passengers safe, of course; these stories always are. But the first episode seems to put a real emphasis on the personal, especially when it comes to Edie and Bárbara.

They’re best friends but also opposite sides of what it meant to be a career woman in the early ’70s. Edie is constantly juggling, while it seems that Bárbara glides through her life, being completely put together and having affairs with married men. It’ll be interesting to see how each of them handle being the point people during this hijacking; they’ll likely be the ones that have the most interaction with the hijackers themselves.

What we’re wondering is how well the creators and their writers are going to be able to maintain that balance between thriller and soap. As the situation gets more dire and the crew and passengers try to figure out how to defeat the hijackers, we get the feeling the frothier parts of the story will fall away. That kind of transition can work, as long as there isn’t a jarring tonal shift.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Bárbara tells Edie that they’ll be on a beach in Havana in four hours, but the cockpit finds out that the coordinates the hijackers want to go to aren’t anywhere near Havana.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the show’s music coordinator, because the needle drops in the first episode are all stellar, with Spanish versions of songs like “House of the Rising Sun” setting the mood.

Most Pilot-y Line: Bárbara tells Imogen to keep saying “66 times 7” in Spanish to help her smile.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Hijacking Of Flight 601 is entertaining and looks great; we just wonder if this thriller/soap hybrid is going to maintain dual tones throughout the series.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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Movie Review: ‘Wicked Little Letters’ a wonderful film, J.P. Devine writes

Olivia Colman, the belle of the new cinema, emerges here as a buttoned-up serial nut case in a family of local “crabs.”

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Olivia Colman, left, and Jessie Buckley in “Wicked Little Letters” 2023. IMDb photo

Halfway through director Thea Sharrock and writer Jonny Sweet’s “Wicked Little Letters,” comedy of errors, old timers in London, should any still be with us, start to suspect that someone from the old Ealing Studios in London, like the casts of “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Lady Killers,” advised for this wonderful film.

“WICKED LITTLE LETTERS” Comedy, Crime, Drama When people in Littlehampton — including conservative local Edith — begin to receive letters full of hilarious profanities, rowdy Irish migrant Rose is charged with the crime. Suspecting that something is amiss, the town’s women investigate. Length: 100 minutes Rating: Severe profanity, mild sex, nudity, violence, gore, and alcohol, drugs and smoking. Director: Thea Sharrock Writer: Jonny Sweet Stars: Jessie Buckley, Olivia Colman, Timothy Spall

Sharrock and Sweet are new to many of us, but of course, both have such prestigious backgrounds, it’s time you should get acquainted.

So here they are, and it’s all yours to let them get you through all of your troubles.

Olivia Colman, the belle of the new cinema, emerges here as a buttoned-up serial nut case in a family of local “crabs,” and you may be stunned to see her in the final scenes, play, as Sir Richard Burton liked to say, “to the Gallery.”

Colman tackles Edith Swan, almost in silent movie style with lots of shocked gaping mouth and big eye moments like Gloria Swanson coming down that famous cinema staircase.

Indeed, even while she has her engine in “park,” she steals scene after scene, except, when the flammable Jessie Buckley, (“Women Talking”) an Irish scene stealer, comes back to the tiny English town as Rose Gooding, at the end of “The Great War” in the 1920s and lights up all the streets. Advertisement

Watching Buckley back home again with a sweet, guitar loving little girl Nancy (Alisha Weir) and Black boyfriend Bill (Malachi Kirby) come abreast of Edith, our secret scribbler, the fireworks begin.

Gooding and Swan give us a series of face offs, like Joe Frazier and Ali in the “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975. Buckley, all sassy, blessed with a vulgar Irish mouth, and Colman with big eyes and pursed lips, start a smoky neighborhood vendetta.

These two stars abide, you see, right next door to one another.

Slowly, like Irish stew on a cold night, it all comes to a slow boil when innocent townsfolk start getting soft porn letters with dirty cockney insults in their boxes.

When the townsfolk get all shocked and riled up, and want the local “gendarmes” (Hugh Skinner “Falling for Figaro” 2020) to find and punish the offender, our Edith claims it’s our Rose Gooding.

Gooding is a natural suspect because her everyday language is the worst out of a drunken seaman’s mouth. Gooding’s arrest involves a curious and sympathetic young woman cop, officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan “We Are Lady Parts” 2021) whose question of the charges, gets her fired, so she plots a revenge that ignites the plot. Advertisement

I’ll not give another word or blow the surprises away. It’s gonna be your shock to feel, amazement to enjoy, and the hour to fully enjoy watching the fun finale.

Watching Buckley and Colman joist and especially the rest of the supporting cast like Gemma Jones as Edith’s sweet mother, and then there’s the great Timothy Spall who “slightly” over acts as Rose Gooding’s father and town curmudgeon, but he’s so good you just applaud his excess.

“Wicked Little Letters” may be a small jaunt in a small English village, and not light your wick, but the folks were fun and I loved being introduced to Sharrock’s light touch and look forward to her next work. And Sweet’s handling of an old true story? An Ealing ghost in there somewhere? Maybe?

“Wicked Little Letters” now playing at Waterville Maine Film Center.

J.P. Devine  of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and more stars welcome Kristen Wiig to the 'SNL' Five-Timers Club

Welcome to the club, Kristen Wiig .

The " Palm Royale " star hosted " Saturday Night Live " for a fifth time this weekend, and as is tradition, she was inducted into the show's prestigious "Five-Timers Club" in a cameo-filled monologue. The twist? Most of the appearances were by stars who aren't actually in the club, which is reserved for those who have hosted "SNL" five times.

The first to appear was Paul Rudd , who has been in the club ever since he hosted "SNL" for his fifth time in 2021. While sitting in the audience, he was wearing his Five-Timers Club jacket.

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"I also heard a rumor that you might be doing one of those five-timers sketches featuring awesome celebrity cameos," Rudd said. "So is there a script or something I could look at for that?"

Previously on 'SNL': Kate McKinnon brings on Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph for ABBA spoof and tampon ad

After Wiig told the "Ant-Man" star she isn't doing one of these sketches, former "SNL" writer Paula Pell showed up to humble her a bit, declaring that "SNL" gives out Five-Timers Club jackets "to everybody like free maxi pads." Case in point? Matt Damon appeared next wearing one of the jackets, even though he has only hosted "SNL" two times.

The star joked that "SNL" creator Lorne Michaels told him "the first time I hosted was so good, it counted for three. Second time, not quite as good, that only counted for two, but by my math, that's five, baby!"

This led Wiig to question if the Five-Timers Club jacket has any meaning anymore, and the show then cut to Michaels surrounded by Fred Armisen, Jon Hamm, Will Forte and Martin Short, all of whom were wearing the jackets, despite not having hosted five times. "Together, we've hosted five times," Forte said. Michaels could be seen cracking up as Short passionately defended him against Hamm, who confronted the producer about the fact that he hasn't hosted in more than a decade.

Tina Fey welcomes Emma Stone: The star joined the 'SNL' Five-Timers Club

Finally, all of the celebrities joined Wiig on stage to initiate her into the club through song. But there was still one last cameo: Ryan Gosling , who could be seen putting on a Five-Timers Club jacket off stage. "Are you sure?" he asked Michaels. "I mean, I haven't even hosted three times yet. It seems unfair." ( His third hosting gig will be April 13 .) At the end of the monologue, though, Gosling was the one to officially hand Wiig her jacket.

Emma Stone most recently joined the "SNL" Five-Timers Club in December, with Tina Fey welcoming her in. Other stars who have joined the club in recent years include Woody Harrelson and John Mulaney .

Kristen Wiig returns as Aunt Linda to review 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer'

Later in the show, Wiig reprised one of her classic "SNL" characters: Aunt Linda, a woman who appears baffled and annoyed by virtually every movie she sees. On Weekend Update, Wiig's Linda offered her take on last year's biggest films, starting with " Barbie ."

"I didn't get it!" she declared. "Is she a doll that comes to life? It doesn't make any sense. And where are they, on the moon?"

Wiig's Linda then reviewed Christopher Nolan's " Oppenheimer ," this year's Oscar winner for best picture. "Directed by Christopher No Thanks," she said. "Why the heck would anyone make a movie about the person who invented the microwave?"

Linda also provided some TV criticism with a review of " The Bear ," expressing her bewilderment with the "very misleading title" and the fact that the kitchen on the show is so "unorganized" and "understaffed."

"Why is he so upset?" she also asked. "He found a bunch of money in the tomato sauce. And what the heck is Kenergy ?"

Kaia Gerber makes a 'SNL' cameo in 'Pilates' sketch

Other highlights from the episode included a mock movie trailer treating a Pilates class like it's a "Saw"-style horror film. Wiig starred as the instructor, and Kaia Gerber made a cameo.

"Usually, there are eight gorgeous women, one gay man not wearing underwear, and sometimes, Kaia Gerber," Sarah Sherman's character said while describing the Pilates class before Gerber appeared and declared, "This is randomly so easy!"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and more stars welcome Kristen Wiig to the 'SNL' Five-Timers Club

Culture Crash: Will 2024 Be A Sleeper Year For Movies?

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Review says Abbey Gate bombing wasn’t preventable, refutes claims troops sighted the would-be bomber

WASHINGTON (AP) — The suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed U.S. troops and Afghans in August 2021 was not preventable, and the “bald man in black” spotted by U.S. service members the morning of the attack was not the bomber, according to a new review by U.S. Central Command.

The findings, released Monday, refute assertions by some service members who believed they had a chance to take out the would-be bomber but did not get approval. And, for the first time, the U.S. military is confirming that the bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State militant who had been in an Afghan prison but was released by the Taliban as the group took control of the country that summer.

The Abbey Gate bombing during the final chaotic days of the  Afghanistan withdrawal  killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more. It triggered widespread debate and congressional criticism, fueled by emotional testimony from a Marine injured in the blast, who said snipers believe they saw the possible bomber but couldn’t get approval to take him out.

Former Marine Sgt.  Tyler Vargas-Andrews  told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last March that Marines and others aiding in the evacuation were given descriptions of men believed to be plotting an attack. Vargas-Andrews, who was injured in the blast but not interviewed in the initial investigation, said he and others saw a man matching the description and might have been able to stop the attack, but requests to take action were denied.

In a detailed briefing to a small number of reporters, members of the team that did the review released photos of the bald man identified by military snipers as a potential threat and compared it with photos of al-Logari. The team members, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public, described facial recognition and other analysis they used that they said confirmed those were not the same man.

“For the past two years, some service members have claimed that they had the bomber in their sights and they could have prevented the attack. We now know that is not correct,” said a team member.

They said they also showed the photo of the bald man to service members during the latest interviews, and that the troops again confirmed that was the suspicious man they had targeted.

The review notes that the bald man was first seen around 7 a.m. and that troops lost sight of him by 10 a.m. The bombing was more than seven hours later, and the U.S. says al-Logari didn’t get to Abbey Gate until “very shortly” before the blast took place. They declined to be more specific about the timing, saying details are classified.

Family members of those killed in the blast received similar briefings over the past two weekends and some are still unconvinced.

“For me, personally, we are still not clear. I believe Tyler saw what Tyler saw and he knows what he saw. And it was not the guy that they were claiming was the man in black,” Jim McCollum, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, told The Associated Press.

He said the team went into “pretty good detail, not trying to discredit Tyler, but effectively saying he was wrong. However, that ended up being as clear as mud to us.”

And Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, questioned the photo itself.

“They kept saying this is who Tyler Vargas-Andrews was looking at and we were thinking to ourselves, ‘well, that’s interesting. Why is this a picture of a picture from a Canon camera?’” he said. “To me it felt like they were trying to find the guy in those cameras that may have come close to looking like somebody of interest that they can try to sell to us.”

The families, however, also said they were relieved to get more details about their loved ones’ deaths, saying the initial briefings were not as good.

Schmitz said that Army Gen. Eric Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, was part of the latest briefing and apologized for how the families were treated during the initial probe. This time around officials were able to share with Schmitz for the first time exactly where his son was when the bomb went off and that he was unconscious almost immediately, and therefore did not feel the impact of the shrapnel that went through his left torso, hitting a primary artery.

“That to me was, first and foremost, the best news I could have gotten,” Schmitz said. “That gave me a little bit of closure that my son didn’t suffer, which made me feel really good.”

Team members said they also are planning to speak with the troops who were interviewed this time, to share the results of the report.

They said the review also could not completely rule out claims that militants did a test run of the bombing several days earlier. But after reviewing photos and other intelligence, the team concluded it was unlikely that three men seen carrying a large bag — which troops deemed suspicious — were doing a trial run.

More broadly, the team said the review brought some new details to light, including more discussion about the possible bombing test run. But they said overall it confirmed the findings of U.S. Central Command’s initial investigation into the bombing: that it was not preventable and that reports of threats prior to the bombing were too vague.

As an example, the new review noted that threat reports talked about a possible bomber with groomed hair, wearing loose clothes, and carrying a black bag. That description, the review said, could have matched anyone in the enormous crowd desperately trying to get into the airport.

The team said they conducted 52 interviews for the review — adding up to a total of 190 when the previous investigation is included. Service members were asked about 64 questions, and the sessions lasted between one hour and seven hours long.

A number of those questioned weren’t included in the original investigation, many because they were severely wounded in the attack. The new review was ordered last September by Kurilla, largely due to criticism of the initial investigation and assertions that the deadly assault could have been stopped.

Members of the team said the Islamic State group put out the bomber’s name on social media, but U.S. intelligence was later able to independently confirm that report.

U.S. Central Command’s initial investigation concluded in November 2021 that given the worsening security situation at the airport’s Abbey Gate as Afghans became increasingly desperate to flee, "  the attack was not preventable  at the tactical level without degrading the mission to maximize the number of evacuees.”

Critics have slammed the Biden administration for the catastrophic evacuation, and they’ve complained that no one was held accountable for it. And while the U.S. was able to get more than 130,000 civilians out of the country during the panic after the Taliban took control of the government, there were horrifying images of desperate Afghans clinging to military aircraft as they lifted off.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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‘Season of Shattered Dreams’ expands baseball players’ stories in 1946 Spokane Indians bus crash

Big league talent spread across the 1946 Spokane Indians baseball team, until lives and dreams were shattered by a bus crash nearly 80 years ago.

That year on June 24, the bus heading to Bremerton, Washington, began descending Snoqualmie Pass on its west side when an oncoming car crossed the center line and clipped it. The bus tumbled off the highway and plummeted into a ravine before bursting into flames.

Among 15 teammates on board, nine players died. Survivors were badly injured. Three members who weren’t on the bus kept memories that never faded.

Those individual players’ stories, along with influences of post-World War II times, captivated Eric Vickrey, author of “Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything.” Its release is Tuesday.

Vickrey, 44, is scheduled to talk about the new book at 11 a.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave. A West Seattle resident, he’s a full-time physician assistant at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, but Vickrey also writes about baseball history as a hobby.

“I’d never heard of the Spokane Indians bus crash until a few years ago when I was actually researching a player who was playing for the Bremerton Bluejackets that year and I came across a newspaper article,” Vickrey said.

“I thought, this is quite a story. I’m surprised I never heard about it. That stuck in the back of my mind.”

Vickrey, a decadeslong Cardinals fan, grew up in Illinois with a love of baseball. He now cheers for the Mariners. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he began writing for the Society for American Baseball Research and later completed his first book: “Runnin’ Redbirds: The World Champion 1982 St. Louis Cardinals,” released in 2023.

He picked up the thread for the Indians book by late 2022, and Vickrey credits groundwork laid by Jim Price, a retired Spokesman-Review sports reporter. Price wrote several articles about the 1946 Indians crash and interviewed survivors in the years later.

The crash’s death toll remains the largest in the history of American professional sports, said Price, who reviewed Vickrey’s manuscript. He also advised on a 2006 book, “Until the End of the Ninth,” set around the tragedy.

“I admire the fact that Eric took this on and was able to succeed, because it is an extraordinary story about an extraordinary team,” Price said.

Vickrey dove into more research, reading Spokesman-Review and Spokane Daily Chronicle archives, while reaching out to surviving relatives of players.

“A couple of the family members still had scrapbooks, which included letters and mementos of players involved in the accident,” Vickrey said. “I was able to gather first-hand accounts of players describing their feelings about everything from their baseball career and their aspirations in the game to what was going on in day-to-day lives.

“I feel like that added a lot to the project, being able to add the voices of those players.”

Vickrey decided to focus on a few players who stood out, including Vic Picetti, the youngest player and a talent at first base.

“He was widely considered by baseball scouts to be the best prospect on the West Coast.”

Picetti, 18 when he died in the crash, had played for Esquire Magazine’s high school All-Star Game in New York. There, he met legends such as Babe Ruth and Mel Ott. All 16 major league teams expressed interest in signing him.

“Ultimately, he signed with the Oakland Oaks,” the author added. “He played for Casey Stengel, the manager who sent him to Spokane so he could gain more experience.”

Picetti likely would have joined baseball greats, he said, but his family story also is painful.

“Vic not only had dreams of playing baseball, but his father had passed away a year before, so he was the sole provider for his mother and two younger siblings.”

The book includes parts about outfielder Bob Paterson, who also died and had big league promise. A family member shared his letters about going pro in baseball.

The life of survivor Jack Lohrke sounds like a Hollywood movie, Vickrey added. He fought in WWII, landed on Normandy a month after D-Day and was in the Battle of the Bulge.

Returning after the war, Lohrke got bumped off a flight from New Jersey to California by a higher-ranking officer, Vickrey said, and that plane had later crashed.

“He had already had multiple brushes with death before the bus crash,” Vickrey said. “He was pulled off the bus in Ellensburg when he found out he was being called up by the San Diego Padres, then he hitchhiked back to Spokane while the rest of his teammates carried on.”

Lohrke went on to play for the New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies, but an early nickname made him uncomfortable.

“After his close call with the Spokane Indians bus crash, it was shortly thereafter he was given the nickname, Lucky, and that stuck with him the rest of his life,” Vickrey added. “He often said he wasn’t comfortable with that nickname; I think because it was a reminder of his fellow soldiers and teammates who were not so lucky.”

Survivor Ben Geraghty aspired to be a baseball manager and had played before the war for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He briefly managed the Indians, then eventually held that role for the Milwaukee Braves’ farm team in Jacksonville, Florida, when Hank Aaron played for him. Aaron often credited Geraghty’s influence, Vickrey said.

“Aaron always said that Geraghty played a pivotal role in helping him navigate that difficult season in the Jim Crow South,” Vickrey said. “Aaron always called Geraghty the best manager he ever played for. He thought Geraghty should have been given a shot at managing for the major leagues.

“What ultimately happened was Ben had fear of bus travel, so kind of the way he coped with that was by drinking alcohol. His heavy drinking ultimately had negative consequences on his health, may have been what prevented him from managing in the major leagues and probably contributed to his early death at the age of 50.”

After the crash, the Indian’s roster was filled in from other organizations. Two Indians players who had driven separately, Milt Cadinha and Joe Faria, stayed on the team. Pitcher Gus Hallbourg returned after recovering from injuries. Until his 2007 death at age 87, he was the last survivor still alive.

The close-knit 1946 team had a good shot at winning that year’s league pennant, Vickrey said. After the accident, the reframed group finished seventh out of eight teams.

Vickrey’s book includes postwar factors, when baseball saw an influx of players returning from military duty.

The U.S. struggled with inflation, poor infrastructure and lack of materials. The charter bus had its own troubles. Driver Glen Berg had complained of brake and engine trouble.

“A lot of talented players from the New York Yankees and two Pacific Coast League teams ended up in Spokane that summer. My goal with this book was really to tell the stories of the players who lost their lives, and also the impact that the crash had on the survivors. It had ripple effects through families and across future generations.”

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