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New Century of Cinema
DOWSE Guide to the
Movies
by Tony Lee editor of
Pigasus
Press
Crash
96 minutes (18) Columbia Tristar
Director: David Cronenberg
review by Steven Hampton
Based on J.G. Ballard's cult novel, this is about a mixed group
of accident victims who become obsessed with car crashes. Nominal leader, Vaughan
(Elias Koteas of Exotica and, bizarrely, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles),
goes so far as to recreate the fatal wrecks that killed movie celebrities like James
Dean and Jane Mansfield. Crash survivor, James Ballard (James Spader, perfectly cast),
is drawn into Vaughan's shiny but shadowy world, which gives new meaning to the term
autoeroticism. Metal bodywork has fetishistic appeal here. Road rage is an acceptable
form of foreplay. Ballard has sex in cars with the doctor (Holly Hunter) whose car he
hit. Vaughan's pet stunt driver is killed in a horrific pileup. Jaded thrill seeker
Ballard blithely watches his wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) screw Vaughan in a
carwash. There are lots of medical support appliances to match the dented bumpers, as
Cronenberg's view of motorised danger attempts to bridge the distance between broken
bones and damaged chassis, cracked psyches and bald tyres. There are nipples on
steel, tattoos on thighs. There's a brilliantly staged car chase without seatbelts or
airbags. There's cold passion and scar tissue but almost no blood in this film. None
of the characters are actually likeable, yet when today's statistics for traffic
tragedies are taken into account, it becomes clear that we all share - if only a
little - in Vaughan's acute psychosis and Ballard's fascination for death as a
turn-on, so audience identification with the wannabe corpses is a certainty, if not a
very welcome one. Recommended, for adults only.
DVD extras: just basic. There's scene access in 21 chapters, superb widescreen
presentation (1.85:1), a choice of English or Spanish sound and subtitles, plus the
original cinema trailer.
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