CRASH(2004)

Academy Awards – BEST PICTURE!

The movie had started with a couple of cops, Officers Waters and Ria (Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito) arriving at a scene where a dead body was found.  The body belongs to Peter (Larenz Tate), one of the two carjackers who assaulted Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Jean (Sandra Bullock) earlier.  Jean, after tripping and falling through the stairs, twisting her ankle, overcomes her bigotry and recognizes that her Hispanic maid Maria (Yomi Perry) is the only person -possibly, beside her husband- who has always been there for her; they both embrace.

Racist Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) ends up rescuing Christine (Thandie Newton), whom he had harassed sexually, from an explosion, thus somehow revindicating his attitude.  At the same time, his former partner, Officer Hanson (Ryan Phillippe) rescues Christine’s husband, film producer Cameron (Terrence D. Howard), from being wrongfully gunned down by other cops, after he fiercely confronts Peter and his buddy

Anthony (Ludacris) and is mistaken for a carjacker himself.  The Persian storeowner, enraged for being robbed and finding out his insurance won’t pay him back, decides that Mexican locksmith Daniel (Michael Peña) had something to do with it, and grabs his gun and goes to Daniel’s house to kill him.  In the middle of the confrontation, Daniel’s little daughter comes out as the store owner fires (big shock!!) and it seems like he shot the girl, but she miraculously survives unharmed; later on, it turns out that the storeowner’s daughter, Durri (Bahar Soomekh) had put blanks in the gun because she knew how volatile her father was.

Peter grabs a ride from Officer Hanson; while riding together, a race-issued misunderstanding comes up and it ends with Hanson accidentally shooting Peter in the chest; scared, Hanson tosses Peter’s body off his car, and sets the car on fire, abandoning it.  Later, Cameron passes by that area, walking, and calls his wife Christine, thus making up with her after they had estranged from each other since the harrassment incident.

Carjacker Anthony picks up the vehicle from the Korean guy he had accidentally run over earlier and, when he tries to have it sold, he discovers the back was packed with Oriental illegal immigrants.  The Korean guy was obviously a human trafficker; his wife comes to the hospital Emergency Room looking for him, and he instructs her to immediately cash a check he had received.  Anthony releases the illegals in the middle of Chinatown, and, at the same time, as the movie ends, we see social worker Shaneequa (Loretta Devine) arguing with someone who has just CRASHED into the back of her car.