Misguided, schlocky ?Crash? lacks subtlety

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In theaters

CRASH, directed by Paul Haggis, written by Haggis and Bobby Moresco, 107 minutes, rated R.

Is there a more well-meaning group than those who came together to make the new Paul Haggis melodrama “Crash”? Maybe ? but let’s not encourage them or their guilt.

The film, which Haggis co-wrote with Bobby Moresco, is a misguided, heavy-handed message movie about the current state of race relations in Los Angeles. That’s an important subject to explore ? and let’s hope someone with the proper approach tries again soon ? but not like this. This is schlock.

Without a trace of subtlety, Haggis (screenwriter of “Million Dollar Baby”) tackles the race issue by employing a cloying web of coincidences and stereotypes that leave his film choking on its own good intentions.

Broadly and simply ? and never with the insight of a director like Spike Lee, for instance, or John Singleton when he’s good ? Haggis uses his impressive cast to flesh out a story whose rage is manufactured and whose script feels as if it’s keeping it real by letting loose with an endless string of racial epithets. The idea is that if you say the N word often enough, that’ll shake audiences in their seats.

Please. Maybe it would have if the movie hadn’t obviously existed to manipulate its audience, but that’s exactly what it does. Worse, Haggis’ script can’t support the stretch it takes to sustain those manipulations. It just snaps, taking the film down with it.

In the movie, nearly a dozen characters keep colliding in Los Angeles as if the city were restricted to one neighborhood, one street, one corner. There are 10 million people in L.A., most of whom likely will never see each other even once, but in this film, characters from all cross-sections of life just keep crashing into each other in the most ugly of ways.

For instance, there’s mean, wealthy Jean (Sandra Bullock), the unhappy housewife of the city’s equally tense district attorney (Brendan Fraser), who refuses to announce their SUV was stolen at gunpoint by angry two black men (Chris Bridges, Larenz Tate) because it might cost him the black vote.

Meanwhile, Jean treats her Mexican housekeeper with utter contempt while she believes that her Latino locksmith, Daniel (Michael Pena), is a gang banger who might sell their new house key to thugs. Her “proof” of this is that Daniel sports a few prison tattoos. And so, in a fit of rage, she demands that her house be fitted with new locks the moment Daniel changes them.

There’s more ? lots more, too much more to explore here ? but in short, there’s Ryan (Matt Dillon), the racist cop who sexually assaults the wife of a black man (Terrence Howard) while his naive partner, Hanson (Ryan Philippe), looks on in horror. There’s Farjad (Shaun Toub), an Iranian shopkeeper with anger management issues who is certain that Daniel, the aforementioned locksmith, also is out to screw him, which is why Farjad buys a gun. And there’s Don Cheadle as Graham, a black detective whose life is complicated by the tumultuous love affair with his Latina partner and whose own mother is a drug user desperate to save her other son ? you know, the black man who stole the SUV at the film’s start.

Along the way, Asians are run over by trucks and forgotten. Chinese women launch into fights with black women and lose. And then we’re hit with redemption. By the end, Haggis flips everything on its side and offers us wholly opposing views of these people ? hey, some whites, blacks, Latinos, Iranians and Asians aren’t so bad after all! We’ve just misjudged them! ? but it all amounts to zip onscreen and the emotional wreckage, forced from the getgo, is ghastly to behold.

Grade: D

On video and DVD

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, 118 minutes, rated R.

Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” exists too far on the outside to allow audiences on the inside. It chooses style over logic, character and story, and while it has a likable cast that seems game to entertain, the script hampers them with a pulse too offbeat to generate momentum.

This is Anderson’s most self-conscious movie to date. It’s also his worst. In it, Bill Murray is Steve Zissou, an Americanized version of Jacques Cousteau whose career is in the can ? he hasn’t had a hit documentary in years ? and whose marriage to glamorous wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), is on the verge of collapse.

Complicating matters for Zissou is that his long-lost son, Ned (Owen Wilson), has recently entered his life; the British journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) may be writing a hatchet piece about him; and his best friend, Estaban du Plantier (Seymour Cassel), was recently eaten by a shark.

And not just any shark. We’re talking the jaguar shark, a mysterious beast of the deep no one else but Zissou has seen. Well, no one else but Zissou and Estaban, who has realized that rare fate that befalls so few. He has become jaguar shark droppings.

For most, this would be too much to handle. But not for Zissou. For him, it’s a grand opportunity to film a comeback picture filled with enough drama to seal his future. After all, Zissou plans to seek out the jaguar shark and blow it up with dynamite. And what sells better to the masses than a nice, satisfying explosion?

As written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” sounds fun, but it isn’t. The fun is stripped out of it. Occasionally, Murray lifts the film with his droll delivery, and Huston, who is armed with the bite of a woman who has known the world but never beauty, holds your interest with that face, those eyes, that hair. But the movie is more for the page than it is for the screen.

Too many threads intertwine here, too many ideas and shifts in tone. The actors inhabit an exclusive world that exists in a vacuum. Audiences will want to step inside, but they won’t be able to. This club is private and all of the doors are locked.

Grade: D+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, and are archived at Rotten

Tomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Alfie ? C-

Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy ? B+

Assault on Precinct 13

? C+

Bad Education ? A

Being Julia ? B+

Birth ? B+

Blade: Trinity ? D

The Chorus ? A-

Closer ? B-

Collateral ? B+

Cursed ? C-

Darkness ? D+

Elektra ? C-

Ella Enchanted ? B

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ? A-

Exorcist: The Beginning

? F

Finding Neverland ? C

Flight Of The Phoenix

? C-

The Forgotten ? D

Friday Night Lights ? B+

House of Flying Daggers ? A

The Incredibles ? A

In Good Company ? B+

King Arthur ? B

Ladder 49 ? B

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events ? B-

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou ? D+

Maria Full Of Grace ? A

Meet the Fockers ? C

Napoleon Dynamite ? B+

National Treasure ? C-

The Notebook ? B+

Ocean’s Twelve ? C-

The Phantom of the Opera ? C

Ray ? A

Saw ? D

Shall We Dance? ? B

Shark Tale ? B-

Sideways ? A

Spanglish ? D

Taxi ? D+

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice

? C+

The Woodsman ? B+