Crash Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
The most controversial film you will ever see.
Love in the dying moments of the twentieth century.
Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former 'TV scientist' has become obsessed by the marriage of motor car technology with what he sees as the 'raw sexuality' of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes who they contort into the shape of trapped-corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.
| James Spader | James Ballard |
| Holly Hunter | Helen Remington |
| Elias Koteas | Vaughan |
| Deborah Kara Unger | Catherine Ballard |
| Rosanna Arquette | Gabrielle |
| Peter MacNeill | Colin Seagrave |
| Yolande Julian | Airport Hooker |
| Cheryl Swarts | Vera Seagrave |
| Judah Katz | Salesman |
| Nicky Guadagni | Tattooist |
| Ronn Sarosiak | A.D. |
| Boyd Banks | Grip |
| Markus Parilo | Man in Hanger |
| Alice Poon | Camera Girl |
| John Stoneham Jr. | Trask |
| David Cronenberg |
5.90 out of 10 (11883 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Sex and death in the worst way.
posted on 30 Aug 2009A handful of fairly good actors give decent performances in a story about death, disfigurement, and sex. Unfortunately, the material in no way lives up to the talent spent on it. The characters' sexual obsession with car crashes is not only distasteful, but truly unbelievable. Though titillating, the sex seems as self-destructive as the obsession. Isn't your fondest dream to have your sweetheart mangled and disabled in a crash?
James Ballard and his wife have a complicated sex life. After a terrible road accident Ballard starts to explore the thrills of danger, sexuality and death
posted on 30 Aug 2009A real disappointment in Cronenberg! I used to like his films, but this one is reaching my limits! I wonder how the movie could get so many wins! It is gross, unpalatable and absolutely boring! There is nothing else to be said about it than that it is the most VULGAR film I ever saw.No wonder it has been banned in several towns in the UK! What I do not understand at all is that some critics want us to believe this could easily be the best Cronenberg movie ever! The prize they especially designed for him in Cannes is not even deserved! If being daring is fit for a prize I wonder why snuff movies would not get it!It is only disgusting. vote:1
Crushed and Brushed!
posted on 30 Aug 20091996 flick 'Crash' is truly a interesting piece of work. Sex and Adultery goes all out and does become a good late night watch. The Nc-17 rating is a bravo and purely sexy. The film has a depressing and disturbing plot. But the exciting sex scenes and good enough performances give this flick a Thumbs up for my side!Pluses: First rate sex scenes, explicit scenes. Unger and Spader are truly commendable. Holly Hunter has a great body.Minuses: Its way to adult to have a viewing. Some scenes are plain bland,'Crash' is a film which you should watch alone, so you can enjoy the scenes.
I don't get it.
posted on 30 Aug 2009This is a comment from someone who doesn't claim to be a critic...in any way. Just a normal guy. This is a film that goes so far beyond any type of sensibilities that I have that is was just plain weird, not sensual or sexy. It's no wonder that it could never get farther than the artsy fartsy crowd. the proof is the number of theaters it was released in and the subsequent amount of money it made. The NC-17 rating assured a small release and small money. I question whether the director, producer, or writer are imitating life or trying to shape it. Trying to make us think that either we are all weird down deep or making us think, "Thank God I'm not that bad." Who knows? What I do know is I'm not that bad...car crashes and similar tragedies have the opposite affect on me, sex is the last thing I think about. That kind of pain is a powerful turn off. I know there are all kinds, but the premise is so far beyond normal, it forces one to turn off a rational part of the brain to make it work. But then again, by my own admission, I don't get it. Big question mark in my mind on this movie. In my opinion, it really is a waste of a good two hours for anyone.
What happens to people to who don't attend driving lessons?
posted on 30 Aug 2009They end up in this movie.David Cronenberg is back from his previous UN-Cronenbergian work with this disturbing assault of fetishistic and sexual images. To amp things up,he has recruited the extremely disturbing sex-actor JAMES SPADER.(Secretary,Supernova etc.)It was only a matter of time before this seriously disturbing actor found the right director.For Cronenberg, he has found the perfect actor to channel his "imagination". The film is chock-full of sodomy, masturbation, sex, perversity and weird character motivations which stem only from sex. For God's sake, it BEGINS and ENDS with a sex scene!The film has some flaws for I found out that I could never relate car crashes with sex.(I'm gonna have sex with a guy I bumped on the the road?) It just doesn't add up.Nevertheless,IT IS STILL FUN! See bizarre sex scenes beyond your wildest imagination. Be shocked and repulsed by group masturbation accompanied by Howard Shore's music.And the best part of all is you get to see Spader do one of the most disturbing acts he has done in his sexually oriented career. I always wondered what it would feel like to watch Crash.I would never underestimate Cronenberg again. The film is disturbing and shocking. Watch at your own risk. Spader might bump his car into yours. and whoever you are, YOU WONT BE SAFE FROM HIM.
Airbag's like Bedroom Pillows
posted on 30 Aug 2009David Cronenberg directs soft core porn for car crash fetishists. When I read the words erotic printed on a DVD/VHS case, I usually take it with a grain of salt as virtually any euro or artsy film with more than one close up of a set of lips, will get the brand "erotica", but this was pretty genuine smut, and that at least I appreciated. From the first scene onward we get fairly straightforward sexual escapades in virtually every scene, punctuated with car crashes or involving cars in some way. The performances are emotionally stale even during sex, eternally alienated, everyone's looking for greater and greater kicks, and the story moves like any porn should with escalating extremities building toward climax, but if there is a climax, and Im not totally sure there is one, it comes a little too late, and doesn't leave us with any intellectual or emotional denouement, in the end everyone is as automatic and mechanistic as the cars they operate. That being said Cronenberg is as much a masterful director of the body and the human form, here as he was ever, veering between unease, violence, the grotesque, and the arousing eventually into a wreck, but a flaming wreck of a film, that fails, but does so in manner that can generate arguments and interesting thoughts, not a film for everyone, but for the minority interested in literate cinematic porn, there may be something amongst the debris.
Did a bad "break up" ever leave you feeling like a "wreck"?
posted on 30 Aug 2009I see this movie primarily as a metaphor for human relationships. I love this movie, and I love the violent reactions it provokes, particularly here in the U.S. People will object to it as if it's depicting something real, like it's a documentary about car crash sexaholics. And I think the icy detachment of the film's style encourages that viewpoint for a lot of people. It's a clinical look at human sexuality, shot with all the clear, sharp focus you'd need to film an autopsy.There is a lot of humor in this film, but it's always mixed in with tension--usually an uneasy apprehension about an impending crash. You want to laugh because it's absurd, but you keep quiet because Cronenberg has forced you to be a voyeur watching some of the deepest, darkest sex fetishes people could possibly have. It's a made-up world, of course, but the rampant realism makes it seem deadly serious. But it's not.And the James Spader / Elias Koteas kiss is the hottest male/male kiss in all of cinema.
'Controversial' doesn't equal 'classic' – remove the director's license, if anything.
posted on 30 Aug 2009I don't know about other people but when I think of car crashes I think of destruction; I think of death; I think of loss; I think of the time and effort that it'll take to rectify not only the situation involving how the hell you're going to get around now the car's gone but also how you're supposed to recover from the shock of it. In David Cronenberg's ridiculous attempt at a film, when the character's think of a car crash, they think of sex and then some more sex and then even more sex after that.When I watch a film, I like them to have plots and developments and characters I don't spend the whole time despising for one reason or another. Sometimes, hating characters is good and can be done cleverly: disliking an evil character or not liking the ways in which certain characters go about their business can also be good fun but when you see a film that is just a barrage of sex scenes, bizarre characters talking like they're in some sort of drug induced stupor and silly, unbelievable developments; it's very difficult to not only switch your mind off to what's going on but also be tempted to not switch the film off.Alas, Crash is a film that just wants to shock. It's like an eight year old child that you get in stores or any other public place, begging their parents for more of what they already have and making a really big deal about absolutely nothing for no reason; it's like the attention hungry child who wants everyone to notice them or the co-worker who 'bigs' themselves up to the point where you just don't care because you don't believe what you're hearing – in Crash's case, it's 'hearing'. A film critic or maybe they were a film theorist once said that: "Cinema is a way of looking into other people's lives – people who only exist on screen and have no knowledge of the camera and us." In essence, this is what Crash is: it's a portal into the lives of James Ballard (Spader) his close to constantly naked wife Catherine (Kara Unger) who always talks like she's just had a shot of heroin and they're relationship which breaks up a little when James finds time to hang out with a bunch of equally annoying freaks in the form of Vaughn (Koteas), Gabrielle (Arquette) and a few other dregs whose main turn on are car crashes. This is one portal I wished I hadn't looked through.Crash just consists of a bunch of random sex scenes between two characters we don't even know in the first third, then consists of sex scenes between two characters we don't even give a damn about in the second third before trying to end up as some sort of tragic, poetic love story about two people who have now discovered what really sexually turns them on. Needless to say, it misses that particular mark by an absolute light year. There is one scene that is constructed and shot in such a way that it could resemble a sex scene in a film even though it's not. It's the scene when James and Vaughn are driving slowly past a crash site as Vaughn takes pictures of various things; getting off over the blood, the death and the way the victims are trapped: the camera shots are close ups of numerous things such as the still bodies, the blood on the door and the way the pliers are applied by the firemen as they crank down and break off the metal framework blocking them from rescuing the victims – this is not only disturbing in the sense it's supposed to be entertaining but odd that the film-makers assume that we even care about what's going on and think we will like these characters.Crash is a film that fetishises car crashes and glorifies them as if they're as desirable as sex is. In fact, take away most of Vaughn's dialogue and some scenes involving characters talk about nothing in particular and the film would be pornography. Pornography doesn't need to have a plot but when it does, I'm sure it's at a very basic level with minimal character development and talking; again, Crash fits these two descriptions and it's absolutely shocking – Crash is quite easily a wreck of a 'film' and probably one of the worst I've ever seen.
oddly intriguing (but the "auto erotic" joke has been done already)
posted on 30 Aug 2009The best thing about this is the music Howard Shore composed for it. It is exactly right for this film. It sounds like the heartbeat of a cyborg.I was expecting to be more shocked by this film than I actually was. The injuries are not particularly stomach churning. In the original novel by J G Ballard, the hero (whom he named James Ballard after himself) suffers a scalp laceration and some kind of stomach injury that involves a description of what happened to his bowel contents.In fact, the novel contains a lot about bodily fluids, including a poetic description of vomit and much, much more. This element is rather lacking from the film.I saw the film before I read the novel, so I was not sure what to expect from it.The characters never get out of their depths. I wondered if one of them would find himself or herself stuck in a situation he or she could not handle: too badly injured, or in too much pain, but that never happens.Given Cronenberg's history as a director of horror films, I did wonder about one of the characters actually dying and wondered what sort of afterlife they might find. Again, any concept of the afterlife was missing.Reviewers often bracket this together with two of James Spader's other films, "sex, lies and videotape" and "Secretary". I think one of the big differences between this and those films is that in them, there is a heroine who breaks through the barrier Spader's character has erected (pun intended) around himself. In "Crash", his character stays firmly in his own weird little world.It is odd that he shares his first name with the character he plays, but that can only be coincidence.I am not sure if the script girl we briefly see near the start of the film is fully naked, but of the main cast, Deborah Kara Unger is the only one who is completely fully frontally naked.I wasn't very impressed by the film the first time I saw it, but there is something about it that is quite haunting. Parts of it stay in the memory.
Another challenging film from Cronenberg.
posted on 30 Aug 2009Crash starts as film producer James Ballard (James Spader) is involved in a car crash in which he is badly injured, a man dies & his wife Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) is also hurt. James becomes fascinated with cars & car crashes, he then meets up with Helen who also has a thing for crashes & they start to have a sexual relationship. They meet up with a guy named Vaughn (Elias Koteas) who is the founder of a small group of people who stage car crashes for their own sexual fulfilment, they listen in on emergency service channels & turn up to car crash accident scenes & take photo's, they get turned on by watching video tapes of car crashes & get off on looking at pictures of people badly hurt in crashes...This Canadian British co-production was written, co-produced & directed by David Cronenberg & is a difficult film to analyse & at times is a difficult film to watch. The script was based on the book Crash by J.G. Ballard first published in 1973 & deals with people who have a fetish for car crashes, I have no idea whether there really are people out there who get turned on by such things but it wouldn't surprise me it there was, & in that respect it's quite a difficult film to relate too as I can't really put myself in any of the character's situations. Cronenberg is a meticulous filmmaker & he knows how to develop character's, how to write dialogue, how to shock & Crash is certainly an extremely well written film with brilliant characterisations. Crash is very much a character driven film rather than an events driven one, the character's dictate the on screen action rather than the other way round. There are some disturbing scenes but the film is never overly graphic or exploitative, people describing car crashes to each other as they have sex, getting turned on by someone else's injuries & voyeuristically looking at real life car crash accidents are strange notions & ideas to try & understand. While watching Crash last night the time flew by, in fact I couldn't believe how quick it went even though it's a relatively slow film so in that respect it certainly grabbed me & drew me in. I'm not to sure whether I enjoyed Crash or not which sounds odd I know but I just can't quite make up my mind whether I did or not & maybe I never will.Director Cronenberg is a top filmmaker & Crash has lots of style & is as artistic as a film about car crashes can be. There's a fair amount of sex both straight & gay plus a fair amount of nudity although it's not gratuitous, there's no blood or gore so forget about anyone having sex with dead bodies or open wounds. Crash was an extremely controversial film when it was released, here in the UK the national tabloids really laid into it & several councils up & down the country banned it although the notoriously strict BBFC passed the full uncut 'Unrated' version intact & is now freely available on DVD here in the UK uncut, personally I think it's the notion & ideas behind the film which are more shocking than what is actually seen on screen. Cronenberg's response to the controversy was brilliant & clever, he simply said 'there are two versions of Crash, one that exists on screen & one that exists in peoples heads' & that to me is the perfect answer because it's so true.With a decent sounding budget of about $10,000,000 Crash is well made, it's striking to look at & Cronenberg is just a great filmmaker & it's as simple & straight forward as that. Shot on location in Toronto in Canada. The film won the Jury Special Prize & the Golden Palm at that years Cannes Film Festival which apparently raised a few eyebrows. The acting is very good from a solid cast.Crash is a difficult film to analyse, sometimes a difficult film to watch but it's never less than fascinating & absorbing in a disturbing sort of way. I'm not sure I can recommend it as I'm not even sure I liked it myself, a real curiosity from Cronenberg.
If Movies Are Made To Communicate, It Does Have To Go This Far
posted on 30 Aug 2009Crash, as everyone knows, is about a group of people who find their most insatiable sexual arousal from bloody car crashes. But it's more than that. It's about the nature of fetishes. Are fetishes good for us or bad for us? They can replenish sex lives when they're becoming a bit too concise, but they're like any addictive pleasure. They can go too far. They also don't have to be harmless in and of themselves. It's not just dressing in leather and feeling the brief sting of a small whip resembling the things that cheerleaders shake. It can be anything that taps into psychological basis of one's sexual urges. The story takes us through the life of a man who realizes the underworld of people that share his extremely dangerous fetish and, as his motive is to only utilize his fetish to improve sex with his wife, he and other participants grow obsessed with it and it becomes a lifestyle.I praise the film's daring exploration of one of the deepest, darkest, least communicated subjects, and the last line and the following closing shot are both emotionally haunting, but that aside, I was disappointed with David Cronenberg's deviation from his usual style, an unmistakable emotional involvement dominantly glimpsed in the musical score. Crash has his quiet, slow-flowing atmosphere but without its punctuating verve in the cinematography and music, both of which are like that of a movie made for television. The film is successfully black and blue, and the music hits the right notes, no pun intended, in the evocation of sexiness and seduction its jazzy saxophone and keyboard were going for, though it sounds perhaps synthesized.The high points of the film are no doubt its sex scenes, beautifully and realistically choreographed, for the most part avoiding Hollywoodization. Characters sweat, hump, intertwine, and lust. The laconia of the main character's sex with his wife and the single- minded, desperately passionate lustsex are very clear in Cronenberg's discreet way.
James Dean, wheeled vehicles and physical intimacy : All rolled into a single film.
posted on 30 Aug 2009My first reaction regarding Crash is that a lot of unnecessary noises were made upon its release at the Cannes Film Festival.One close look at this film will prove that there was not even a single valid reason for censuring the entire depiction of human closeness, violence and vacuum in human society. Everybody know that what appeared torrid in 1995 is undoubtedly tepid by today's 2007) standards. The admirable quality of this film is Cronenberg's decision to film Ballard's book which has 3 most venerable elements known to human civilization:cars, closeness between a man and a woman and James Dean. No one will ever venture any inane guesswork that a film featuring the above elements can ever remain unnoticed. As human beings are always engage themselves in perpetual search for thrills in their hollow lives they end up doing things as portrayed in Crash. According to my understanding of this film, I reckon this is the unofficial message which David Cronenberg wishes to give out to the whole world.
And The Moral Of This Story Is? Oh, I Forgot, There Isn't One
posted on 30 Aug 2009The tag-line of this movie reads: 'The Most Controversial Film You Will Ever See'. Well, not only was it controversial to the extent to which it was subsequently banned in cinemas throughout the UK 11 years ago, but the narrative and plot of the film was as ridiculous as it was distasteful. The idea of people getting turned on by car crashes didn't just sound stupid and lame but also sick. I for one am not the reader of the English newspaper the Daily Mail. I am not even middle class myself and so therefore, my views on this film in no way are based on or influenced by some tabloid press but rather from a personal point of view. Thus, what I dislike most about Crash however is that it has a stupid and inane premise and the fact that it was such a terrible film in itself.The plot of Crash revolved around a couple whose husband played by Spader ends up paralysed in a car accident. Of course this doesn't stop him and his wife from doing it with each other and even with other people. Spader's character has him having sex with Holly Hunter, in addition to this he even has a homo-erotic encounter with a guy (not that I have anything against homosexuality whatsoever that is). In fact, one of the main problems with Crash is the rather daft plot- its all about sex, sex and sustaining injuries and losing control of their libido by dangerous driving and that its all done in a cheap, tacky, demoralising and distasteful manner. When they have sex, they don't do it out of love for the other person but rather out of sexual arousal, out of desperation and out of weakness. They couldn't really give a toss about the other person's feelings, or the people they hurt. If anything those characters in Crash come across as being selfish, as well as perverse.Another problem is the actual point of this film- what message is this trying to evoke to its audience? What can the audience themselves take away from this viewing experience? And is there a point to all this? The answers to those questions can only be answered by those able enough to come up with meaningful answers. But unfortunately, they have not been addressed or tackled whatsoever within this movie.I failed to see how I could empathise with or feel remorse for the main characters. In fact, I utterly despised watching this film, that I was thinking as I was seeing the events take place, 'What the hell was that?'. I'm sorry but getting aroused at the expense of others and endangering others by getting involved in car collisions doesn't make for a good movie. It looked so tacky and on screen, the scenes would've offended those of whom were lucky enough to survive a car accident or two.There isn't really a moral to this silly story because let's face it, with a complex and controversial subject such as sex, in Crash with car accidents and people having sex with each other and other people, how on earth can there be one, for sure? David Croenberg has come up with some very strange concepts for films- hell, we often watch scenes in TV sitcoms and dramas for instance where the character is a novice at driving the car, or is attempting to drive the car and the other guy says something like 'imagine that this car is a woman and you're in a relationship with her/it' or some silly crap such as that. However, this one takes the biscuit as it has become a step too far. Crash was a terrible waste of a film and in Spader, Hunter and Arquette- of whom are three undeniably good actors, their talents were virtually unseen in this so-called diabolical 'porn' fest. For me, it was a nonsensical piece of garbage.
Sexiest Motion Picture to Date!
posted on 30 Aug 2009When Cronenberg's "Crash" came out in the theaters in Seattle, the audiences gave it standing ovations. Of course, that's Seattle! James Spader was thinner & sensuous playing the lead man's role. Debra Unger & he have quite the cinematic chemistry to generate steaming sexual scenes.Car crashes are a group of fetishists' thing to get off on. Some re-stage famous fatal ones: Jimmy Dean's, Jane Mansfield's. The car crash fetish ring leader drives a town-car like JFK was assassinated in.Holly Hunter is extremely surprising as she plays a bisexual car crash fetishist physician who is way into having sex in cars; most especially after near crashes.I don't know how this film got away with a R rating! But, I'm glad it did! It's a scorching hot sexy motion picture with one heck of a deviant plot. I bet even director John Waters liked this one. . . .Surprisingly, there is romance in the movie. Spader & Unger stay together throughout all other crash scenario flings. The most fascinating thing about Cronenberg's "Crash" is how true to life it is & was in Seattle, when it first came out."Crash" is a remarkable study of fetishism. That's why it is not pornographic. Yes, the numerous adult sex scenes are extremely graphic; but, Cronenberg prevents the subject matter from being degraded into pornography.With an amazing star cast, "Crash" not only was, but still is, one of the most controversial movies today. Doubtless some of the audiences have to ask themselves, "Are there really people like these?" The answer is overwhelmingly, indeed there are. Cronenberg & cast was the group brave & brazen enough to get real about human sexualities.
Interest in Psychoanalysis overshadowed by boredom
posted on 30 Aug 2009Well, in the first 10 minutes of the film, I caught myself yearning for more eroticism. Perhaps, that's quite an achievement for the filmmakers. I really did not know what to expect so I continued watching in the hopes that I would get something out of it.As I go on, I am convinced that this is really a weird film. There goes James Ballard and the rest of the characters with their own fetishes motivating their sexual lives (not to mention Vaughan who is really in love with his art called car crash). Basically, the only interest I had in this film was the eroticism (even with the absence of love). So I decided to wait for another boring scene so I could get rid of it. But then, something interesting is brought up--Vaughan (Elias Koteas) expresses something magical about the SEXUALITY of the people who suffered (or died) in car crashes. I figured that there seems to be a connection between "manipulating a sexual life" and "driving a car". It goes without saying that both, if not maintained, could result to one's doom.Without a doubt, there really is an interesting metaphor that should be thought through. But this film is not intense enough from cover to cover that one would stop exploring the depth of its theme (at least, that's what I think).
fails to achieve any of the things that fans of this film use as its justification
posted on 30 Aug 2009as fans stick up for it and say that haters don't understand its aims, I on the otherhand can understand its aims and the context and still think its a pile of rubbish. none of the depth and tales of wisdom that these images are meant to represent come across well enough, they whole movie smells of cheap cologne, its actually pretty boring and you really don't have to watch anymore than an hour of this rubbish as they narrative/story just don't exist. so he uses a car instead of heroine, or we are all to absorbed by technology, whatever, the film doesn't have enough to say to justify the running time of this ultimate fake arty farty rubbish. madonna in that film with the candle wax was more entertaining, and there are hundreds of films about addiction or technology with more panache and substance requiem for a dream, trainspotting, primer, . this should be burnt and just forgotten. i turned it off after 1hr 15. and then wrote this, cos i hate people who think this stuff is some how great, and if you don't like it, its because its just too cool to be appreciated. get over yourself Cronenberg, not saying the topic s not interesting but this is a lame attempt at film making from someone who really should know better.
One of the very worst movies I have ever seen.
posted on 30 Aug 2009I just saw this utter piece of crap on HBO. Yes, it was the fully uncensored NC-17 version. My partner had recorded it for me just to show me how bad it was. He was correct.While my feelings about it are not quite as strong as his (he says that everyone associated with it should have been shot), I came on here hoping to find an average rating of no higher than 4.0. I cannot believe that it has gotten an average rating of 5.9! The fact that more than ten percent rated it a 10, and another ten percent or so rated it a 9, shows that there are some really sick and disturbed people in the IMDb community. Much worse than that, though, that means that there are this many people out here that obviously have no discriminating taste in films.Being gay and a proud liberal Democrat, I consider myself to be very open-minded, especially when it comes to art, literature and film, but the fact is that this movie is crap. It is well-made in some scenes; however, that means that it is just fairly well-made crap! I know, David Cronenberg really made a film about sexual obsession in general, using sex and something completely unrelated to do so, yadda yadda yadda. Other than that, IMDb Community, what the *beep* was the point of making this? My well-considered answer: there was none.For one thing, all of the main characters are sick, uninteresting people. They get off on being involved in car crashes. In fact, this entire film is like a car crash: you watch it for morbid curiosity's sake, but you eventually want to turn away. I didn't turn away; no, I made sure that I watched it through to the end. But I kept wanting to turn away from about the 40-minute point. I know that Rosanna Arquette pretty much had no career at this point and needed whatever paltry salary she got for doing it. But what the hell was Holly Hunter thinking??? She had just won the Best Actress Oscar for The Piano just three years earlier! Just like my partner, I would not dissuade anyone who REALLY wanted to see Crash (1996). However, be forewarned. And....PLEASE do NOT let the ridiculously high ratings for it on IMDb fool you!
A truly silly sexual-fetish drama that will have you laughing.
posted on 30 Aug 2009Or "How I Learned to Appreciate Cars With Bad Safety". Or "How I Love to See You Die In A Car Crash While My Girlfriend Unzips Me". This movie is what you get when a director of horror films gets into a mid-life crisis. Exactly what Cronenberg was thinking when he decided that Ballard's book has a great premise, is anyone's guess. The absurd premise that people can get sexually stimulated by car-crashes, scars, amputated limbs, and scratches on cars, is so ludicrous that the movie can at no point be taken at all seriously. The fact that the viewer can neither identify with the characters nor their laughable and idiotic obsession makes it even harder to watch this and not chuckle a bit.Let's now meet our lovable, life-loving, happy, though a little moody, pack. First we have Spader; he plays a man bored with his money, jet-set lifestyle, and quick in-outs with ready-and-willing young Asian camera girls. So a true improvement is introduced into his life-style when he gets crashed into by a horny Hunter, who wastes no time in masturbating to her unsuspecting victim, while they both bleed. However, the victim, Spader, soon learns to appreciate the not-oft recognized sexual qualities of metal and steel, and joins Hunter and her deranged car-freaks in an odyssey of self-exploration (not to mention self-mutilation). Then there is his perpetually horny girlfriend, Deborah K.U.; this woman thinks with her vagina all the time - to the point where her brain is in a constant comatose state (hence her slow and pointless utterances). She is so horny that even an (intentional) accident can't put her off sex; this happens at the end, when Spader goes at it like a bunny, but not before asking her "are you alright". "Oh, why not... Just because I have multiple injuries, scratches, open wounds, and blood all over me doesn't mean I'm not in the mood for it, darling..." she must have thought. After realizing she is in (relatively) okay shape, Spader then gently reassures her that next time they will be "luckier". Really romantic stuff. Then we have Koteas, who overacts in his portrayal of the leading psycho of this sorry bunch. He babbles about his "project", and eventually decides that women just aren't interesting enough so he goes at it with Spader; needless to say, the absolute low point of this wanna-shock-society piece of nonsense. (I had to fast-forward this scene. I'm a little disappointed that Cronenberg's mid-life crisis got so out of control that he decided to live out his gay fantasies with this unwatchable scene. (It's one thing to ask for tolerance for what homosexuals in the privacy of their four walls, but it's an entirely different thing when that "action" is shoved into our faces: "Here! Two gays having sex! Watch and learn!")) We also have Holly Hunter, an actress with an inferiority complex (and rightfully so, I might add); Hunter was probably ecstatic to finally get offered a role where she is a sex-object, and gets to show her pitiful pair of breasts. Sorry, Holly, but that accent and speech impediment don't exactly make you any sexier, either. And let's not forget Rosanna Arquette; a woman who, unlike Hunter, probably never did a film without showing her breasts. She plays a half-cyborg half-human with an enthusiasm for spare parts unrivaled in the Western hemisphere. This film makes "Naked Lunch" look like a kitchen-sink UK drama.A sequel in the planning: "Crash II: Cars Aren't Interesting Anymore: Let's Cause Nuclear Devastation And Unzip Each Other While Millions Burn And Perish, My Love".3 out of 14? Well, well, looks like some rabid Holly Hunter fans have ganged up on my humble little review. I had no idea she had as many as 11 fans! Damn!SHOULD HUNTER END HER CAREER DUE TO EXTREME UGLINESS AND HER INABILITY TO TALK PROPERLY? CLICK "YES" OR "NO".
dangerously erotic work that changes years after seeing it
posted on 30 Aug 2009David Cronenberg's Crash was one of those "dirty" movies I more than likely wasn't supposed to rent let alone watch when the NC-17 cut first came into existence on video (and, if anything, the film was more than an eye-opener in my young teen state, going even further than I had seen at the time with Boogie Nights or Kids). But I didn't pay quite as much attention to the story as I should've, aside from the James Dean subplot (as I remembered it anyway, with Elias Koteas's character), and from the very dark atmosphere. It was almost TOO dark at the time, and I stayed away until recently when it was shown on TV late one night. Seeing it now I'm much more absorbed into the wretchedly but totally, sensually charged work by the actors and the crew, and Cronenberg's utmost trust and professionalism with both. It certainly has that effect on a first viewing of veering way too close into the soft-core boundaries, and even seems like the kind of thing that I used to see in that 'scandalous' section of mainstream adult films as a kid like Last Tango in Paris. But the psychology behind the characters ends up being more striking than anything, and like many of Cronenberg's films, the duality of man (and woman, apparently) comes strongly into play, and the merging of the two as usually becomes the case.James Spader is in one of his very best performances- albeit only somewhat removed from the sexual deviants of Sex Lies & Videotape and Secretary (maybe closer to the latter, however without any of that film's outright satire)- as Ballard, also the author this film is based upon. He gets in a car accident, a horrible one, that kills a doctor and leaves his wife (Holly Hunter) injured both physically and psychologically. But Ballard and his wife (Deborah Kara Unger, very good as well) get brought into this strange world that's been built around Vaughn (Koteas, perhaps in one of his top 3 best pieces of work, very creepy but somehow convincing early on, at least to his new arrivals). He is a man who is completely enveloped into his psyche of car-crash sex, and how history ends up adding a mystique to it all (hence the James Dean references, which are very amusingly pathological). But this all becomes very dangerous, if only on some subversive level, when Ballard, his wife, and Hunter's Helen Remington get involved in this underground cult.Seeing the film again, I'm a lot more struck this time after seeing other Cronenberg work how the style slips so amazingly into the content of the picture. The first time around, the style almost seemed to be just another side to the content, that it was obvious to have such a wild yet controlled technique, particularly for the sex &/or car crash scenes. This is as much a credit to Cronenberg's poetic touches to the material as it is to DP Peter Suschitzky and Howard Shore's music, which somehow rises above being too pornographic to being really touching. In fact, after seeing it again very late at night and not remembering the entire film, I may even need to see it again to let it all sink in. But really this won't be the case for all- the NC-17 rating isn't too unwarranted in this case, even if it's more a rating for the nature of the sexual contact and aggressiveness of the fetishism as opposed to something like the Dreamers where there was blatant nudity a lot of the time. I wouldn't dare recommend the R-rated version, however, as the whole point is to see it all in its un-tarnished view. It's a harsh vision painted here of people reaching out for some kind of connection through the most destructive way imaginable. One thing's for certain, once you've seen it there's no mistaking this from Paul Haggis's Crash (and, for me, this beats out Haggis's contrived good-intention machine any day).
The man and his machines
posted on 30 Aug 2009"'Three years ago, I held an exhibition of crashed cars at the New Arts Laboratory in London, People were fascinated by the cars but I was surprised that these damaged vehicles were continually attacked and abused during the month they were on show -- watching this, I decided to write Crash.'" These lines were from the introduction of J. G. Ballard's controversial and at least interesting 1973 novel. A masterful cautionary tale and a great study of sexuality, violence and yeah, car crashes. As you know, this book - arguably one of the 20's century's bests– is the source of David Cronenberg 1996 movie. This is a fairly faithful adaptation that unlike Naked Lunch and The fly can't be called a re-creation. While Cronenberg version can't hold a candle up to the novel (even It's a little tame compared to it), It is an almost masterpiece. Let's leave the novel for now.If you haven't seen the film, you may be surprised if I tell you Crash is a minimalist film. There aren't any stupid setups with that will lead to even a more stupid climate which is supposed to be the movies great scene but are emotional pornography instead. No big explosions. Car crashes are really real, scary and shocking. As Bresson in his alter career (E. g. Mouchette and L'Argent), these Cronenbergian individuals couldn't even be considered as characters. I can easily understand the exaggeration amongst the critics of this film also I don't share their POV.I don't know that in such a movie, how much the plot could be important to someone but here is an outline. James Ballard (James Spader) is openly married to Catherine (Deborah Unger). One day James is involved in an accident with another couple. The husband is killed while His wife, Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) which has been kept in place by her seat belt survives but she is injured. As she breaks free she exposes one of her breasts a detail missing from the novel and the first hint we got to the film's awkward subject. In no time, they find themselves in the same hospital ward. When James leaves hospital he revisits the scene of the crash, meets Helen there and starts a passionate affair. During their affair they begin an exploration of the motor-car in all its forms, attending stock-car races, watching test vehicles being crashed, conducting a variety of sexual experiments on London motorways and anything you couldn't think of.At this point were introduced to the Vaughan (Elias Koteas) the most intriguing character of the film. He introduces them to some people who are experts of auto-eroticism. Colin Seagrave (Peter MacNeill) is a former race-car driver who specializes in staging famous car crashes (such as the one involving James Dean) and Gabrielle, who wears leg braces and a full body support suit. Terrified of Vaughan, and yet under his spell, they are carried closer to the sinister climax of the film. You can laugh at the plot on paper as much as you want, we will see how much you would laugh on watching this on big screen later. By the climax, one can hardly breathe. The outcome is the least important compared to our complete de-sympathy with it.The movie is a virtuoso as any film would like to be in 90's. Cronenberg, along with great cinematographer Peter Suschitzky have given this film a darkly original look. As mentioned before, Car crashes are disturbingly real without any straight in your face explosions. Howard Shore's score helps a lot for setting the mood and it is not overused. Too many directors should learn to not go overboard with music.I can't deny that the first aspect of movie that grabs our attention is its style. As it is the case in some of great movies you might think you're watching only a form driven film but- It's not as simple as someone might think on first viewing - one should not forget that style is some sort of context itselfRewatching is necessary here. The movie's best scenes are those that were not on the novel which probably remain unnoticed on first viewing unless you've read the book before. Unfortunately, acting is not top notch here with James Spader delivers the worst amongst the cast. I liked to punch him in face. He was great for his role in Sex, Lies and Videotapes but James Spader for crash? Even Ballard himself would be a better actor. Holly Hunter is good as usual but her role is not The Piano's Ada. The only standout performance is Elias Koteas who shines as Vaughan (probably best role of his career).As William S. Burroghs mentioned in his essay on Ballards novel, In the book -like two other Ballard's best novel Atrocity Exhibition and Super-Cannes - The nonsexual roots of sexuality are explored with a surgeon's precision. He believes that an auto-crash can be more sexually stimulating than a pornographic picture. This magnification of image to the point where it becomes unrecognizable is a keynote of these three books and since people are made of image, these are literally explosive books. From the writers I know, Only WSB reaches the same level at pointing to the same issues that by chance Cronenberg deals with. Cronenberg mentioned that he wanted to be a writer at first but he couldn't free himself from the influence of these two, so he became a film maker. Probably his greatest achievements were Naked Lunch and Videodrome; in the mean time his other films can't be underestimated. Crash is near masterpiece with some little flaws that I can live with. This is one of the greatest films of 90's.