In 'Crash,' the American melting pot boils over'Crash' is like a highway pileup in its bruising racial collisions

Like Amores Perros and 21 Grams, both by Alejandro González Iñárritu; Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland; and any number of Robert Altman pictures, Crash maps out the random intersection of strangers, the fateful turnings of events and awful coincidences that can upend lives.

Paul Haggis' gnawing study of a disparate group of Los Angelenos is about accidents, then. It is also about accents, and skin color, about perception and prejudice. Boasting the coarsest racial epithets - the kind one hears too often in the real world, but too rarely in the movies (even movies professing to be socially accurate) - Crash offers, until its pile-it-on ending, a powerfully honest assessment of the state of "melting pot" America.

And it's not pretty: There's a white cop (Matt Dillon) bristling with resentment at the perceived advantages that blacks, aided by affirmative action, enjoy inside and outside his department. There's the successful African American TV director (Terrence Howard) whom some, including his own wife (Thandie Newton), view as a sellout to the white establishment. A Chicano locksmith sent to fix the broken door of a small Hollywood market is greeted with paranoia and loathing by the shop's proprietor (Shaun Toub), an Iranian immigrant. Blacks badmouth Asians, Asians seethe at blacks. Insults are hurled, anger surges.

Haggis, a TV veteran whose first produced screenplay, Million Dollar Baby, received a raft of Oscars in February, was the victim of a carjacking in Los Angeles years ago. His ruminations about the young black men who robbed him and his wife at gunpoint, and his humiliation and rage, were the catalyst for what became Crash. Larenz Tate and Chris Bridges, a.k.a. the rapper Ludacris, are seen early on exiting a chain restaurant near UCLA, complaining about the service (or lack thereof) that they received, they think because they are black. Haggis craftily takes the audience down the sidewalk with this duo - they're making good points, you think. They have reason to complain.

And then Haggis pulls the rug out.

There's a whole lot of rug-pulling in Crash, which has been shot with understatement and exactitude by J. Michael Muro and deploys a soft, spectral Mark Isham score to chilling effect. Dillon delivers a performance that's blunt and brave. Ryan Phillippe, as Dillon's rookie partner, brings nuance to a tricky role. Don Cheadle adds another fine, subtle turn to his resume, as a plainclothes police detective investigating a murder. Brendan Fraser is a district attorney campaigning for office, and Sandra Bullock is his wife - a tightly wound soul visibly afraid of the world, and of certain ethnicities that cross her path.

Jennifer Esposito plays Cheadle's partner, a Hispanic, with matter-of-fact finesse. And Newton, whose character is subjected to a form of physical harassment that leaves her shaken to the core, is fascinating to watch - a thin bundle of ire and fear.

Crash fools around with chronology in a Tarantinoesque way that brings its story full circle. You could argue that as events, and people, merge, Haggis' spiky screenplay (cowritten with Bobby Moresco) gets to be, quite simply, too much. The drama (and melodrama) piles up like so many cars in a freeway chain reaction.

But like that nerve-rattling collision of metal and glass, Crash will leave its audiences jarred awake, feeling bruised. This is a film that people will be talking about, and arguing about, for a long time - and rightfully so.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/stevenrea.

Crash *** 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Cathy Schulman, Don Cheadle, Bob Yari, Mark R. Harris, Bobby Moresco and Paul Haggis, directed by Haggis, written by Moresco and Haggis, cinematography by J. Michael Muro, music by Mark Isham and Shani Rigsbee, distributed by Lions Gate Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 47 mins.

Ryan. . . Matt Dillon

Cameron. . . Terrence Howard

Christine. . . Thandie Newton

Graham. . . Don Cheadle

Hansen. . . Ryan Phillippe

Ria. . . Jennifer Esposito

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, adult themes)

Playing at: area theaters