Messy, honest reality on race.(Crash)(Movie Review)

What comes to mind when you think of movie dramas about race relations? Painful earnestness. High political correctness.

In 1967, we got Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, essentially a grand pronouncement carried down from the Hollywood Hills like a self-satisfied 11th commandment. A preachy, pious face-off between a pair of liberal white parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) and their prospective black son-in-law (Sidney Poitier), only the indomitable charisma of its stars saved the movie from being as lively as a college lecture.

Even after the rest of American society moved beyond the Civil Rights era, Hollywood didn't. It was just too easy to score moral points by pounding away at a righteous message that everyone already agreed with.

And so we were given historical pictures dripping with "importance"--like 1988's Mississippi Burning, which dramatized the investigation of the murders of civil rights workers in a small southern town. By approaching the topic of race within the confines of the reproachable past, Mississippi Burning could feel smug about "how far we've come," without acknowledging the messy realities of race relations at present.

Things are still messy on the race front. But don't look to Hollywood to acknowledge that. Thankfully, we can go outside the major studios for more realistic, less sanctimonious fare. The most authentic, lived-in depiction of today's multicultural America to be released in some time is the new low-budget film Crash.

The picture's writer-director, Paul Haggis, is a television veteran who recently broke through to feature films in a big way with his screenplay for Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby. Yet despite Haggis's industry credentials, Crash has the real-life rough edges that finely tuned, audience-tested studio films often lack. This movie isn't afraid of discomfort, which is an essential quality for taking on a discomfiting topic like race.

Set over the course of 36 hours in modern-day Los Angeles, Crash consists of a series of interlocking vignettes about an array of multicultural characters. Some of these confrontations upend stereotypes; others confirm them. Some lead to reconciliation ...