Movie review - "Crash" (2006) ****1/2

There's a joke a black comedian once told about walking along the street with his black friend and a white couple cross the road to avoid them, and the punchline is "we were so insulted, we went ahead and robbed them". I was reminded of that when watching this powerful tale, about race and other things in LA. Excellently done, it's the sort of film you get the impression they tried to make with Magnolia but didn't quite get to. It's also reminiscent of La Ronde without the sex - we see how person A interacts with B then B with C and so on. It's not so much a plea for tolerance as for politeness - most of the horrible things happen because people lose their temper and yell, causing misunderstandings. Several moments in particular are outstanding - one moment involving a little girl made me gasp, another sequence involving a person trapped in a car is heart-pounding. Excellent acting (Sandra Bullock is frighteningly believable; Ryan Phillippe is again better than you'd think but again not so good as to not make you wish a better actor had played the part). Does William Goldman consider Haggis deciding not to kill the girl an example of "Hollywood horse-sh*t"? Probably.