Crash

8.5/10. Saw this Saturday afternoon up in Bern at the Royal.

SPOILER WARNING. The following paragraph doesn't really give much away. But I'm someone who likes to know very little about a movie going in, and what's written below is information I wouldn't have wanted to have before seeing this movie.

An ambitious fusion of Do the Right Thing and Magnolia (like the latter movie, it even ends with some unlikely precipitation) Crash is a gripping and affecting look at interracial relations in Los Angeles. Politically it's a failure, as it opts to redeem most of its deeply-flawed characters rather than portray realistic "cause and effect". But after 90 minutes of near-constant hostility and tension, I was frankly relieved that it didn't all end with bloodshed and tragic tears.