Thoughts on Crash

I saw Crash last night.

I'm not sure if I have an overall review, but a few thoughts stand out:

(Spoilers ahead, so text is written in white. Highlight to read text, or copy and paste then alter color if necessary).

Chris "Ludacris" Bridge's character tries to make his carjacking a political statement against white people. But in the end, it's about thuggery; about getting something for nothing. He tries to carjack a black man, despite previously criticizing someone else for "stealing from his own kind" without even thinking about the irony.
His redemption comes when he gives up his pride; symblized by his riding on a bus (which he had earlier sneered at as a mode of transportation) and his apparent belief that everyone else owes him something.

The racist cop (Matt Dillon) was redeemed when he saw the black woman about to get killed in a fire. At that moment, he was able to see her as human; and when her fear of him (he had sexually groped her earlier during an arrest) made her resist his attempt to save her life, he realized for a moment how much damage he had done. His main flaw was that he had allowed the fact that his Dad was victimized by affirmative action (in his opinion) to turn into a resentment of all black people; he blamed them for what had happened to his father and saw them as mere objects on which to take out his rage.

The Farsi businessman was redeemed, presumably, by his realization that what he still had (his daughter) was more important than what he had lost (his store). This was prompted by his nearly shooting to death the daughter of the locksmith he blamed for the robbery (for not fixing the lock" properly, when in reality the problem was with the door, not the lock).

The one death in the movie was committed by one of the least-prejudiced characters. In fact, has he been less determined to show he wasn't prejudiced (by picking up a black man walking along the road next to him), he wouldn't have shot said black man.

Perhaps one message of Crash is that there is decency in everyone; and evil in everyone. You always have to look for the decency that remains in the bad person, and always be on guard for the evil in the good person. And you can stay who you are, or you can change who you are; but you cannot escape who you truly are, you have to deal with it one way or another (I know, that sounds like a terribly bad attempt at being deep, but there you are).

That is all.