Crash

Name: Crash
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Released: March 21, 1997
Duration: 100 min
Rating: 53
Cast: Holly Hunter, James Spader

1997

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 123 Ratings

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3.1	User Score Generally unfavorable reviews based on 123 Ratings

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Crash

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Movie Details & Credits

Fine Line Features | Release Date: March 21, 1997 | NC-17

Starring: Holly Hunter, James Spader

Summary: The immediate subject matter of Crash is the strange lure of the auto collision, provoking as it does the human fascination with death and the tendency to eroticize danger. Most motorists will slow down to stare at the scene of a collision; they may feel their pulses quickening and become exquisitely aware of the fragility of their ownThe immediate subject matter of Crash is the strange lure of the auto collision, provoking as it does the human fascination with death and the tendency to eroticize danger. Most motorists will slow down to stare at the scene of a collision; they may feel their pulses quickening and become exquisitely aware of the fragility of their own bodies. The characters of Crash carry this awareness a step further, cherishing and nurturing it. For them, a car collision is a sexual turn-on, and a jolting life-force they come to crave. [Fine Line Features]… Expand

Director: David Cronenberg

Genre(s): Drama, Thriller

Rating: NC-17

Runtime: 100 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Empire Kim Newman

However, as with Dead Ringers, Cronenberg approaches a touchy concept with a mixture of icy tact and cinematic daring, always informing the wilfully perverse material with a penetrating intelligence and (almost subliminally) very black wit. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Compared with the novel, the movie might seem predictable. But compared with other movies, it stands alone. Read full review

Rick Groen

You may well hate Crash, but if intensity is what you seek in a darkened theatre, you'll hate missing it even more. Read full review

Stanley Kauffmann

None of the people in the film is realized as a character: Cronenberg has no interest in character. Each person is given a dab of characteristics and is then sent off to copulate. [21Apr1997 Pg 26]

Desson Thomson

Crash doesn't extend beyond its most immediate sensationalism. When the movie does attempt to find a theme, it slams into a brick wall of mumbo-jumbo. Read full review

Barbara Shulgasser

Cronenberg has said that he made the film to find out why he was making it. You may watch it for the same reason. Read full review

Dallas Observer Michael Sragow

Cult auteur David Cronenberg crashes and burns--his talent, that is--in Crash, a vain attempt at a techno-age Persona. Read full review

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User Reviews

Joe

Jan 24, 2007

Outstanding film - one of the most powerful and fully realised of Cronenberg's whole career. Excellent performances all round. Haunting, intelligent and long-lasting.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

MathewB.

Sep 19, 2007

A Post-modern masterpiece of cinema. Driven by the eye rather than ear. Deceptively complex. Demands a lot from the viewer.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

FilmBuff94

Mar 31, 2016

Strip way the abstract concept of love and what's left is primal desire fueled by need. But human beings don't like being told they're animals, so they allow their imaginations to construct fantasies to help them justify those needs. J.G. Ballard's novel Crash was pornography for philosophs,Strip way the abstract concept of love and what's left is primal desire fueled by need. But human beings don't like being told they're animals, so they allow their imaginations to construct fantasies to help them justify those needs. J.G. Ballard's novel Crash was pornography for philosophs, with technology as the illusion of choice. A secret society indulges in car sex, leading to accidents as erotic set pieces. The novel and David Cronenberg's film adaptation implicitly state that crashing cars during intercourse allows us to feel genuine sensations as opposed to the numbness of society, jobs, and conversation. It's a far out, all or nothing premise. What's disturbing to audiences isn't that Crash condemns such amorality, but that its characters are stretching their battered and scarred bodies into something new. Very little is discovered about these people besides their extreme proclivities. To give you an idea: the character named Ballard (James Spader) winds up sticking his dick into the serrated leg wound of a crash survivor (Rosanna Arquette) and walks away happier for it.

Anyone willing to go along for the ride may feel repulsed, but Cronenberg has used grotesque images in his work to show mankind's ability to transform itself. If it weren't automobiles, which summon up the right metaphor for full throttle sex, it would be computers (eXistenZ) or television (Videodrome). Cronenberg has made frequent claims that his work has little to do with technology, but he continually returns to the concept of a “new flesh” forged from manmade industry. Whether you see the fusion of Flesh and Other in his movies as a blessing or a curse pretty much sums up your definition of 20th Century Disease: Are we so bored with life that we resort to self-mutilation to define ourselves, and is that really any better?

Cronenberg seems to think so. His final image of two crash survivors groping each other and whispering, “Maybe next time, darling,” while an overturned automobile rests beside them is an optimistic one—a happy ending for a married couple that's communicating better now than they ever have before. The three sex scenes that open Crash show how desperate this modern husband and wife are at the start, having extramarital sex in public places, then coming home to sadly **** each other and describe their increasingly banal affairs. Since we're given almost zero insight into Ballard or his wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), with no hobbies or defining characteristics, we're left with blank slates. That's 20th Century Disease for you: marriage, perfect clothes, a lovely house, affluent but non-distinctive jobs (he's a commercial filmmaker), and sex devoid of mystery.

The characters are treated with all the sympathy of amoebas seen through a microscope, and are less important than the sensations they pursue. Vaughan and Catherine fondling each other in the back seat while Ballard drives through a car wash, gazing at them in the rearview mirror, feels like a head trip back to the womb. When they stop, minutes later, to visit a car accident that's all hunks of smoking metal and busted-up, non-communicative survivors, Vaughan rages through taking photographs—and somehow his gum chewing seems the sleaziest thing here. It'd be grotesque if Cronenberg weren't viewing it all dispassionately, with that passive, obsessive, strangely Canadian voyeurism. It doesn't feel icky because it asks the question, “Let's see how it all works,” and that these weird beings are forging some sort of new community out of their collective desires.

The minimalist storytelling feels hermetically sealed, somehow. As if giving the characters any passion outside of what Cronenberg is interested in would humanize them and make them vulnerable to our judgment as audience members. Instead, we're told that this is the world they're in, without excuses or pity. The cinematography and score, by longtime Cronenberg partners Peter Suschitzky and Howard Shore, respectively, feel distant and tinged with an unusual combination of grayish metal and sensual longing. This provides the essential soulful quality of Crash, and elevates it above a story of sick individuals resorting to the most primitive mating rituals as fantasy or escapism. Cronenberg takes them seriously, and if he takes himself and his thesis a little seriously too, at least he parcels out a certain kind of egghead intellectual humor. When Ballard questions Vaughan about “the reshaping of the human body by modern technology,” Vaughan snickers that his B.S. theory was a clever ruse to get curiosity seekers through the door. In other words, psychobabble is cheap. Just shut up and **** me.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

HellHoleHorror

Feb 15, 2022

This really is weird and sick. The film is not boring at all. It is really twisted from beginning to end. The violence is a little sickening but the real shocks come from the perverse and sick acts that are performed in the film. There are no points that you don't want to watch but there areThis really is weird and sick. The film is not boring at all. It is really twisted from beginning to end. The violence is a little sickening but the real shocks come from the perverse and sick acts that are performed in the film. There are no points that you don't want to watch but there are points when you don't want to see. Nothing particularly profound in this film but it makes you wonder what other people are doing and it makes you realise how much you are reliant on other people not wanting to kill themselves on the roads bringing you down to. Don't drive immediately after this.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

RobertBrogan

Sep 28, 2015

Crash is a film I do not have many good things to say about and yet still cannot downrate it because I do like the cast and always enjoy the signature Cronenberg material sensuality that conveys highly distinct tactile sensations via light and sound. That said, Crash is a boring movie andCrash is a film I do not have many good things to say about and yet still cannot downrate it because I do like the cast and always enjoy the signature Cronenberg material sensuality that conveys highly distinct tactile sensations via light and sound. That said, Crash is a boring movie and not so much edgy as something to be endured. Crash does not feel cool or adventurous and yet most of the film is action; it is like a pornographic movie -- not much plot but just goes through different scenarios, yet does not feel sexy and so does not create tension. The vibe is corrupt, uncool, and dystopic like a glam rock band playing in the mid 90s to a bored audience in a half-filled stadium that needs to be torn down. They smash their gear and we can only think that it was not worth it, what a waste. I would like to think this was all intentional, because I like other Cronenberg films, but cannot really recommend it except to the curious ones that want to see something different.… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

AJ_13

May 20, 2022

Whether you like it or not, you can't deny the originality. Felt empty and repetitive, fortunately has a great pace. I didn't love it but the cast was nice and it was a fun watch overall.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

JoshC

Nov 20, 2006

This is Cronenerg's worst film along with M Butterfly. So empty and shallow, David should be ashamed of himself.The only people I would recomend this film to is insomniacs. This film may cure them.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

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99	#99 Best Movie of 1997
61	#61 Most Discussed Movie of 1997