preview

Essay On The Movie Crash

Decent Essays

Serendipitous Realizations Director Paul Haggis touches upon many sensitive topics in his movie Crash. He weaves a somewhat complicated plot intertwining the stories of several characters who deal with many of the same issues we put up with on a daily basis. From racial profiling and biases to cultural barriers and prejudices, Mr. Haggis spins a compelling, yet heartbreaking story of how some of these very issues bring about epiphanies in the lives of multiple characters. Police officer John Ryan deals with a lot of stress in his life. Stress that comes from his many years on the police force in addition to the stress he is under at home caring for his ill and aging father. All of this tension, coupled with the experiences he has had on the job, has turned Officer Ryan into a jaded cynic. He comprehends this about himself which he shows in a comment to his partner, Officer Tom Hanson, when he tells him, “Wait til you’ve been on the job a few years. You think you know who you are? You have no idea.” During a traffic stop Ryan allows his prejudices to overtake his sound judgment and he molests the black woman from the car he has pulled over. He gets a wake-up call in regards to his behavior later in the film when he arrives on the scene of an accident and realizes …show more content…

He spends a majority of the film spouting off comments about how mistreated black people are. He does not bother to actually pay attention to what is being said or done around him, preferring to paint everyone else black with the same racist brush. He often sees bias where there is none. He narrowly misses being caught up in a shoot out with police and as a result of that incident, he becomes enlightened to the fact that things are not always as they seem to him. After his epiphany, Anthony later shows us that he has grown as an individual when he comes across a van full of Asians who were victims of human trafficking and sets them

Get Access