I don't know about other people but when I think of car crashes I think of destruction; I think of death; I think of loss; I think of the time and effort that it'll take to rectify not only the situation involving how the hell you're going to get around now the car's gone but also how you're supposed to recover from the shock of it. In David Cronenberg's ridiculous attempt at a film, when the character's think of a car crash, they think of sex and then some more sex and then even more sex after that.<br /><br />When I watch a film, I like them to have plots and developments and characters I don't spend the whole time despising for one reason or another. Sometimes, hating characters is good and can be done cleverly: disliking an evil character or not liking the ways in which certain characters go about their business can also be good fun but when you see a film that is just a barrage of sex scenes, bizarre characters talking like they're in some sort of drug induced stupor and silly, unbelievable developments; it's very difficult to not only switch your mind off to what's going on but also be tempted to not switch the film off.<br /><br />Alas, Crash is a film that just wants to shock. It's like an eight year old child that you get in stores or any other public place, begging their parents for more of what they already have and making a really big deal about absolutely nothing for no reason; it's like the attention hungry child who wants everyone to notice them or the co-worker who 'bigs' themselves up to the point where you just don't care because you don't believe what you're hearing – in Crash's case, it's 'hearing'. A film critic or maybe they were a film theorist once said that: "Cinema is a way of looking into other people's lives – people who only exist on screen and have no knowledge of the camera and us." In essence, this is what Crash is: it's a portal into the lives of James Ballard (Spader) his close to constantly naked wife Catherine (Kara Unger) who always talks like she's just had a shot of heroin and they're relationship which breaks up a little when James finds time to hang out with a bunch of equally annoying freaks in the form of Vaughn (Koteas), Gabrielle (Arquette) and a few other dregs whose main turn on are car crashes. This is one portal I wished I hadn't looked through.<br /><br />Crash just consists of a bunch of random sex scenes between two characters we don't even know in the first third, then consists of sex scenes between two characters we don't even give a damn about in the second third before trying to end up as some sort of tragic, poetic love story about two people who have now discovered what really sexually turns them on. Needless to say, it misses that particular mark by an absolute light year. There is one scene that is constructed and shot in such a way that it could resemble a sex scene in a film even though it's not. It's the scene when James and Vaughn are driving slowly past a crash site as Vaughn takes pictures of various things; getting off over the blood, the death and the way the victims are trapped: the camera shots are close ups of numerous things such as the still bodies, the blood on the door and the way the pliers are applied by the firemen as they crank down and break off the metal framework blocking them from rescuing the victims – this is not only disturbing in the sense it's supposed to be entertaining but odd that the film-makers assume that we even care about what's going on and think we will like these characters.<br /><br />Crash is a film that fetishises car crashes and glorifies them as if they're as desirable as sex is. In fact, take away most of Vaughn's dialogue and some scenes involving characters talk about nothing in particular and the film would be pornography. Pornography doesn't need to have a plot but when it does, I'm sure it's at a very basic level with minimal character development and talking; again, Crash fits these two descriptions and it's absolutely shocking – Crash is quite easily a wreck of a 'film' and probably one of the worst I've ever seen.