Mixed reviews on the Internet, big cast, multi-angled story, to me it sounded like a few other movies that have treaded the same ground but still very interesting. The talents of Paul Haggis and the exciting casting of Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, et al, attracted me to this movie and I am thankful that I ignored what the critics have said. The movie is a group of stories of different people that all connect through each other and all relate in some way. It's a strong story, and quite a controversial one. Large in both it's concept and it's cast. I can guess some of their negative reaction has been due to the uncomfortable feeling the movie has throughout and the very strong nature of its content. It's a difficult journey, but well worth going to see. Straight up, many thanks again to Vue Ocean Terminal in Edinburgh for their help with this review, and congratulations to G on her promotion! From the opening scene you're pretty much guaranteed to be shocked and uncomfortable, I know we were and we weren't expecting the tirade of abuse, one of the more uncomfortable aspects of this scene is that it's from a white man to a Persian, whom he thinks is actually an Iraqi. A very disturbing scene, and something that the movie is all about. The abuse doesn't just stop at the white American on Persian, it moves to Latino against Chinese, Chinese against black, black against black, black against white, white against Chinese, and so on. One of the best moments of the movie is at the beginning as two black guys come out of an uptown restaurant in a very white neighbourhood and one begins to rant about how badly they've been treated. "The waitress treated us like dirt, assuming that we're black we wouldn't tip her." he roughly said, and his friend turns to him, "well how much did you tip her?", "That's not the point". This conversation is so well written and helps to highlight the perpetuation of racism through over political correctness and over analysis. It's both funny and insightful and was one of my favourite scenes. The scene just works, watch it, understand it. It covers how hard it is for people in L.A. (and indeed any city) to actually get close to someone else and understand them. It seems to be much easier to blame problems on others than to actually face up to them, and if this movie is anything to go by, racism is a very common aspect of this culture.
This movie has all the prejudice and stereotype that could happen between different races. But they do not show how they used to feel before and how they feel after encountering to different races until they crashing in to them.
The inner city can be a good thing or a bad thing, for African Americans it is often a bad thing as they get caught up in gangs thinking that this is the only way they will have family. This is true in some aspects, because depending on the family, children can be abandoned due to drugs or be subject to violence. In the movie, one of the children, who lives around the pizzeria, is a little girl is abused at home. This often happens in broken homes, like the ones depicted by Spike Lee. In other cases children come from good homes. For example, if one comes from a prominent African American family, they know that everyone takes care of everyone, they work together to take care of each other. In the film, there are several older black men that act like grandfathers to the people on the block. This is reminiscent in of one of the class readings, Family M...
Criticisms (Favourable): Very original, intelligent plot. Well-written characters that aren’t two dimensional and who make human decisions (David’s father, who may seem like a cruel man but who is really just doing what he was brought up to believe is right).
The movie is, most likely, done well enough to intrigue its intended audience. It captured the theme and story line of the book. It falls short, though, when compared to the beautiful, sensitive and contemplative prose of Natalie Babbitt. One could only hope that a viewing of the film will lead the watcher to try the book and be delighted all the more.
Later one, two young African Americans males leaving a diner walking passed a white couple and the woman clutches the man’s arm and move closer. So, Some of the diversity dimensions that I found were related more to characteristics such as age, gender, race, religion, education, income, language within the movie and portrayed the social class discrimination, as well as gender discrimination. Throughout the film, there were some racial lines of tension between all races and against each other such as White on Persian, White on Black, Black on Black, White on Hispanic, Hispanic on Asian, Asian on Black, and White on Asian, Persian on Hispanic.
This movie does provoke a dialogue on race that, according to author and journalist Jeff Chang, "has been anathema to Hollywood after 9/11." During the first viewing of
The book and the movie were both very good. The book took time to explain things like setting, people’s emotions, people’s traits, and important background information. There was no time for these explanations the movie. The book, however, had parts in the beginning where some readers could become flustered.
Firstly, the movie showed physical violence against someone because of their race. This is portrayed when the combined teams arrived at Gettysburg College for camp. One black man puts a poster on his wall above his bed. Another white man says to take down the poster. When the black man refuses, tension rises, and a fight breaks out. If another white man had put a poster above their bed, there wouldn’t be a problem. When the black man did it, it was not accepted. Another time physical violence was displayed because of someone’s race was when a brick was thrown into Coach
This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined. These families were very different, yet so much alike, they both portrayed what to me the whole ‘message’ of the movie was. Although everyone was so different they all faced such drastic decisions and issues that affected everyone in so many different ways. It wasn’t like one person’s pain was easier to handle than another is that’s like saying Vietnam was harder on those men than on the men that stood for black rights or vice versa, everyone faced these equally hard issues. So it seemed everyone was very emotionally involved. In fact our whole country was very involved in president elections and campaigns against the war, it seemed everyone really cared.
...e that makes us both laugh and cry at almost the same time. When we are laughing, we must question the underlying sociological concepts that makes us laugh. Are we laughing at those racist jokes because of our own ethnocentrism? Are we as guilty as Jean Cabot at making our own realities our truths? Do we have views about certain groups of people and basically make them come true for ourselves? Crash questions us for all of these things. This movie successfully forces viewers to address their own cultural backgrounds and their experiences with those of other races. After all, when it comes to racial equality, it should not be ignored. Especially in a city like Los Angeles, we never know when will the truth crash into us and we will be forced to face who we are through someone else’s eyes, no matter how difficult it is to take a look inside and outside of ourselves.
One of the more prevalent themes of this movie is racism, and how prejudicial mindsets ultimately lead to one’s own demise. The movie outlines how racism, among other things, can adversely affect someone’s judgment. After the father died, we see how the family gradually deteriorates financially as well as emotionally after Derek (the older brother played by Edward Norton) turns to a neo Nazi gang for an outlet, which eventually influences his younger brother Danny (played by Edward Furlong) to follow down ...
One of the biggest issues depicted in the film is the struggle of minority groups and their experience concerning racial prejudice and stereotyping in America. Examples of racism and prejudice are present from the very beginning of the movie when Officer Ryan pulls over black couple, Cameron and Christine for no apparent reason other than the color of their skin. Officer Ryan forces the couple to get out of the car
This was especially evident when they were being pulled over by a racist white cop. She felt that he could have done more to defend their rights instead of accepting injustice. There is also a Persian store owner, who feels that he is getting the short end of the stick in American society because his store was robbed multiple times. Then the Hispanic locksmith encounters racial slurs and discrimination, although he just wanted to keep his family safe. The partnered detectives and lovers of different races, one is a Hispanic woman and the other is a black male, who are dealing with his drug addicted mother who feels that he does not care enough about taking care of his family. In this movie, discrimination and prejudice are the cause of all kinds of collisions. We easily prejudge people with stereotypes, and we are concerned with our pre-thoughts of what kind of person he/she should be, we forget to actually get to know them. It is human nature to have some type of prejudices in one way or another; we fear the unknown. There are stereotypes that black people are angry or tend to be violent; white people feel they are the dominant race and discriminate against all; Asians are thought to be poor or ignorant, and people with higher economic statuses are distinguished to the working class
The purpose of the film was to show that no matter what skin color you are what only matters is who you are on the inside. The movie fails in this attempt to display a political statement in a comedic manner in the sense that in reality it depicts that people need to be aware that we should be equal regardless of skin color but it makes a mockery out of the fact that we are not equal in a non-hysterical manner. This movie is not a comedy in the sense that the jokes are funny because they truly are not funny especially for those who face these discrimination issues daily. The movie is basically promoting conformity in the idea that we all know that equality is a far stretch and that we are not there yet so let us just deal with it and turn it into a mockery.
This movie takes place in Los Angeles and is about racial conflicts within a group of people which occur in a series of events. Since there are a wide variety of characters in this movie, it can be confusing to the viewer. In the plot, Graham is an African-American detective whose younger brother is a criminal. His mother cares more about his brother than Graham and she wants Graham to bring his brother back home, which in turn hurts Graham. Graham?s partner Ria is a Hispanic woman who comes to find that her and Graham?s ethnicities conflict when she had sex with him. Rick is the Los Angeles district attorney who is also op...