CRASH BY PAUL HAGGIS

This movie examines the taboo subject of race and race relations; how we see each other and how that impacts how we act, react, and live with one another. It opens with a car crash, a fender bender, that has a Hispanic woman trading insults with an Asian woman based on racial stereotypes over Asian driving habits. A Middle Eastern father and daughter are insulted as potential terrorists when they try to purchase a hand gun. Two young black males feel slighted at their service at a restaurant, evidence of racial discrimination; though at the hands of a black waitress, because she, too, thought in stereotypes about young black males. A white couple are the victims of a carjacking; a black couple the victims of a particularly nasty caharacter. A Hispanic man is shunned while doing his job because he looks like a criminal with his shaved head and tattoos.