Oscar-Winner ‘Crash’ Is Hated by Everyone but Roger Ebert

By the time Jack Nicholson came on stage to present Best Picture at the 2006 Academy Awards, most viewers were confident that Ang Lee’s gay-themed Western romance Brokeback Mountain (2005) would take home the prize, having already won Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score (as well as the top awards at the Golden Globes and BAFTAs). Instead, upon opening the envelope, a visibly surprised Nicholson declared, “And the Oscar goes to…Crash!”

The victory of writer/director Paul Haggis’ sprawling ensemble drama about racial tension in Los Angeles came as a major surprise to many critics, who widely criticized the film’s shallow commentary, questionable character arcs, and disjointed narrative. Acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates even called it “The Worst Movie of the Decade.”

However, both before and after the Oscars, Crash did have one notable advocate: eminent American film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert, who named Crash the best film of the year, completely disagreed with the critical consensus on the film, instead finding it intelligent and emotionally powerful. Even amidst the fierce backlash to Crash’s victory at the Oscars, Ebert wrote multiple columns staunchly defending both the film and the Academy.

Critics Clashed Over ‘Crash’

Crash

Release Date

May 6, 2005

Runtime

112 minutes

Ironically enough, much of the criticism of Crash was directed at its Oscar-winning script, which many critics found clunky, unsubtle, and reliant on stereotypes. Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, for instance, felt that “too often [the characters] act in ways that archetypes, rather than human beings, do.” Similarly, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “I don’t think there’s a single human being in Crash. Instead you have arguments and propaganda violently bumping into each other, impressed with their own quirkiness. (‘Hey look, I’m a Black carjacker who resents being stereotyped.’)” However, Ebert expressed the complete opposite sentiment in his initial review, writing:

Haggis writes with such directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that the characters seem real and plausible after only a few words.

Furthermore, several conflicts in the film are quickly resolved through melodramatic one-on-one interactions that seemingly redeem the bigoted characters. For instance, Jean (Sandra Bullock), the wife of a District Attorney (Brendan Fraser), wrongly suspects that her home’s Latino locksmith is a criminal, only to later tearfully hug her Latina housemaid when she tends to her sprained ankle.

Likewise, a racist cop (Matt Dillon) pulls over a Black couple under false pretenses and proceeds to grope the wife (Thandiwe Newton) while her Black husband (Terrence Howard) helplessly watches. However, the cop later rescues the same woman from a flaming car wreck, a grandiose sequence accentuated by an intensely schmaltzy score and cinematography that frames the rescue as a transcendentally beautiful moment of reconciliation.

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A Study of Racism Meant to Placate White People

Many critics argued that this type of storytelling placates white viewers and undermines its ostensibly progressive racial politics. Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent compared Crash to fellow controversial Best Picture winners Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Green Book (2018), arguing that all three films “present […] racism as nothing more than a personality issue in need of a fix […] absolv[ing their] white audience of any sense of collective responsibility.”

But Ebert defended the characters’ arcs, calling them “parables, in which characters learn the lessons they have earned by their behavior.” Whereas Coates, Loughrey, and other critics saw Crash’s racial commentary as milquetoast at best and offensive at worst, Ebert had a more optimistic view of the film’s approach to tackling racism: “I don’t expect Crash to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves.”

A Mixed Legacy

In the years following the 2006 Oscars, the consensus opinion that Crash shouldn’t have won Best Picture has only further solidified. In 2015, The Hollywood Reporter surveyed hundreds of Academy voters and found that most would now vote for Brokeback Mountain over Crash. That same year, Haggis himself revealed in an interview with Alan Sepinwall that even he doesn’t think Crash deserved Best Picture: “Was it the best film of the year? I don’t think so. There were great films that year.” And there were; Crash won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, but every other nominee is arguably better (Syriana, Match Point, The Squid and the Whale, and Good Night, and Good Luck). Other nominated films that year include A History of Violence, Capote, Howl’s Moving Castle, Walk the Line, Munich, and Junebug.

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Even so, Roger Ebert remained stalwart in his defense of Crash. In two separate 2006 columns, one published before the Oscars and the other right after, Ebert insisted that Crash was more complex and less problematic than its many critics claimed: “It is not a ‘safe harbor.’ […] It is a movie of raw confrontation about the complexity of our motives, about how racism works not only top down but sideways, and how in different situations, we are all capable of behaving shamefully.”

He even attacked fellow critics Kenneth Turan and Nikki Finke for positing that homophobia played a role in Brokeback Mountain’s Best Picture loss. (Ebert was at least partially wrong here, as Brokeback Mountain co-writer and co-producer Diana Ossana told The Advocate that actors Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis publicly refused to see her film due to its subject matter and speculated that many other older male actors privately did the same.) To top it all off, Ebert even named Crash one of the 20 best films of the 2000s.

Ebert Still Deserves a Thumbs-Up

Attempting to parse Ebert’s reasons for praising Crash so effusively when most of his fellow critics dismissed it is difficult, to say the least. His reputation for being so astute and well-read on the formal and narrative techniques of filmmaking might lead one to believe that there was something about Crash that he noticed but everyone else missed — something that might prove that it is a great film after all. On the other hand, one might also be tempted to ascribe his admiration for a movie criticized by prominent people of color like Ta-Nehisi Coates to his personal biases as an older white man.

In any event, though, two points have to be made. First, just because a famous and well-respected film critic likes a movie doesn’t mean other people are obligated to like it as well. Secondly, Ebert’s unpopular opinion on one film doesn’t in any way nullify his observations about other films. After all, movie critics are just like everyone else — human beings with their own tastes, biases, and perspectives.

Anyone looking to form their own opinion of Crash can view it for free on The CW’s website through this link. The film is also streaming for free on Plex, Fandango at Home, and The Roku Channel.

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