I saw Crash the other day. It's directed by Paul Haggis, the dude who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby. If only Crash was as good as Million Dollar Baby it would be one of the best films of the year. For a first time director, his work here is nothing short of great. The film is well shot, well scripted, and well directed. There's a problem though, I couldn't get engaged with the characters. With a film of this magnitude, the length of the film has to be longer, much longer. Ensemble pictures like Short Cuts and Magnolia ran over 3 hours long and were masterpieces because of this. You got you know each and every character, what their weaknesses and strengths were, you got to hate them and love them at the same time. Crash needs to be longer so the audience member would be more in tune with the characters.

Another difference with this film and Magnolia is that some of the characters are one-dimensional, we don't see their bad side but just their good side. Magnolia presented each character as multi-faceted, we got to see their bad sides and good sides, and most of all, everyone had a sense of redemption. Crash doesn't have a redemption at all for not even for one of its characters, the movie just ends and that's it. I didn't hate the movie, the problem is that the film could have been so much better.

At the end of Million Dollar Baby, I felt so sad because of its power. With Crash, I never like that. I never felt sad or happy. I just felt unsatisfied.

I give Crash a C+.