making their audiences better people. I don't expect Crash to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves." Steve Davis of The Austin Chronicle called it the "most compelling American movie to come around in a long time" and said it succeeds in inviting audiences to make preconceived notions about the characters, then complicating those notions. Ella Taylor of LA Weekly described it as "not just one of the best Hollywood movies about race, but along with Collateral, one of the finest portrayals of contemporary LA life period." The performances of Dillon, Cheadle, Bridges, Peña, and Howard were singled out. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Specific scenes, especially those involving Dillon as the racially resentful cop who, like everyone else, has his reasons, bristle with tension as the character continuously pushes past conventional limits in abusing his authority and, redeemingly, in his display of uncommon valor." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film three out of five stars and wrote, "Crash is a very watchable and well-constructed piece of work...but its daringly supercharged fantasies of racial paranoia and humanist redemption are not to be taken too seriously." Joanne Kaufman of The Wall Street Journal opined, “Ultimately, Crash succeeds in spite of itself", noting that at a certain point it "starts to feel obvious and schematic," but remains "a complex blend of compassion and sorrow." The film's plot elements, such as the means through which all the characters are connected, were derided by critics as contrived and unconvincing. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe wrote the film "is one of those multi-character, something-is-rotten-in-Los Angeles barnburners that grab you by the lapels and try desperately to shake you up. It's more artful than Grand Canyon, less artsy than Magnolia (LA gets dusted with snow instead of frogs), and much less of a mess than Falling Down." Burr lamented how "its characters come straight from the assembly line of screenwriting archetypes, and too often they act in ways that archetypes, rather than human beings, do. You can feel its creator shuttling them here and there on the grid of greater LA, pausing portentously between each move." Another criticism centered on the storytelling as didactic and heavy-handed. Writing for Slate, David Edelstein commented Crash "might even have been a landmark film about race relations had its