Crash

The film opens following a car accident involving Los Angeles detectives Graham Waters (Don Cheadle), his partner Ria (Jennifer Esposito), and Kim Lee. As Ria and Kim Lee exchange racial insults, Waters gets out of the car and investigates the crime scene which had indirectly caused the accident. One day prior, Persian Farhad (Shaun Toub) and his daughter Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) are buying a gun, but after a belligerent alteraction with the racist shopkeeper, an infuriated Farhad is escorted outside. Dorri buys the gun and a red box of ammunition. In another part of town, Rick Cabot (Brendan Fraser), the local district attorney, and his wife, Jean (Sandra Bullock) are carjacked by Anthony (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Peter (Larenz Tate). Detectives Waters and Ria arrive at the scene of a shooting between two drivers. The surviving shooter is a white male identified as an undercover police officer. The detectives learn that the dead shooter, a black male was also a police officer. Afterwards, at the Cabot house, Hispanic locksmith Daniel Ruiz (Michael Peña) is changing the locks. He overhears Jean, who is frustrated having felt nervous about the two black men but refrained from saying anything to avoid appearing racist.


LAPD Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) and his partner, Tom Hanson (Ryan Phillippe) begin their evening patrol. They pull over a Navigator similar to the one carjacked earlier, despite discrepancies in the descriptions. They order the couple, director Cameron Thayer (Terrence Howard) and his wife Christine (Thandie Newton) to exit. Cameron is cooperative, but Christine is argumentative. An angry Ryan sexually molests Christine under the pretense of administering a pat-down. Intimidated, Cameron says nothing. When Ryan finishes, the couple are released without a ticket. The next day, Hanson talks to his superior, Lt. Dixon (Keith David) about switching partners. Dixon, a black man, claims that Hanson's charge of Ryan as a racist could cost both Hanson and Dixon their jobs. Dixon suggests a transfer to a one-man car and mockingly tells Hanson that he should justify it by claiming to have uncontrollable flatulence.
At the Thayers' house, Christine is enraged that Cameron did nothing while she was violated. Cameron insists what he did was correct and then storms out. At his home, Daniel talks to his daughter, Lara, who is hiding under her bed after hearing a gunshot. To comfort her, Daniel gives her an "invisible impenetrable cloak". He then puts her to bed and then gets a page for another locksmith job. In the carjacked SUV, Anthony and Peter, distracted by their argument about racism, hit something while passing by a parked white van. Getting out, they see that they have run over an Asian man. Unsure as to what to do, they eventually pull him out from under the car and dump him in front of a hospital. Ryan visits Shaniqua Johnson (Loretta Devine), an insurance representative with whom he argued earlier. Apologizing for insulting her previously, he explains that his father was diagnosed with a bladder infection but fears the diagnosis is incorrect and that it may be prostate cancer. Ryan wants him to see a different doctor, but is told that their health plan won't cover it. As a last resort to talk her into helping out his father, Ryan says his father employed black workers when others wouldn't. He explains that his father's business was destroyed when the city began to show preference to minority owned businesses.
Daniel replaces a lock at Farhad's shop, and tells Farhad that the door is defective. Farhad accuses Daniel of cheating him, and refuses to pay. The next morning, Farhad discovers the store has been wrecked and tagged with racist graffiti. His insurance won't cover the damage, calling it a case of negligence as he had been advised to replace the door. Farhad vows revenge, and discovers Daniel's full name on the discarded work order.
Waters goes to visit his mother. She asks him to find his younger brother. Waters promises to find him, and notices the lack of food in the apartment before leaving. Outside, he lies to Ria and tells her his mother wasn't home. In the studio where Cameron works, a white producer, Fred (Tony Danza), suggests that a black actor isn't acting "black" enough. He strongly suggests that Cameron redo a take, and he eventually agrees. Christine is involved in a car accident and trapped inside her overturned car. Ryan is one of the officers who responds to the accident. Upon recognizing Ryan, Christine screams for him to leave, but he gets her to agree to allow him to rescue her once he points out gasoline leaking from the gas tank. With the assistance of his partner and spectators, Ryan pulls Christine out just as the car bursts into flames. A grateful but confused Christine looks back at Ryan as she is taken away. While Cameron is driving home, Anthony and Peter attempt to carjack his vehicle. A frustrated Cameron fights back, insulted by Anthony calling him "nigga". As police officers are arriving, Cameron gets in the car and drives away at gunpoint with Anthony. A car chase ensues. One of the police responders to the chase is Tom Hanson, who recognizes the vehicle as the one he and Ryan pulled over the night before. As Cameron is trapped into a driveway, he takes Anthony's gun and furiously yells insults at the officers. Just as he is about to pull out the gun, Hanson stops him and convinces him to stop aggravating the situation and go home. Hanson tells the fellow officers to leave him with a "harsh warning", as he has no prior history of breaking the law. Cameron drops off Anthony at a sidewalk, gives him back the gun, and tells him that he embarrasses him.
Peter is picked up hitchhiking by Hanson, who shoots him when he mistakenly suspects he is drawing a gun, then dumps his body. He is revealed to be Waters' missing brother. Waters' mother identifies Peter's body at the morgue and Waters promises to find who is responsible, but his mother tells him she already knows that he killed his brother because he failed to find him as she asked. Dorri comes to see Farhad, who explains that he tried to shoot Daniel after looking his address up in a phone book, but Daniel's daughter somehow blocked the shots. He thinks that the little girl was his angel. Lara had believed she could save her father due to her 'impenetrable cloak', which was seemingly borne out by the inexplicable lack of gunshot wounds on her body. Dorri removes the pistol and ammunition, revealing them to be blanks. Anthony inadvertently returns to the white van from earlier. Finding the keys still in the door, he drives the van away. Kim Lee (the Asian woman from the crash at the film's opening) arrives at a hospital looking for her husband Choi Jin Gui, the man Anthony and Peter hit. Still coherent, he tells her to cash a check that he has in his wallet. Anthony takes the white van to a chop shop, and finds a number of Thai and Cambodian immigrants locked in the back of the van, revealing that the Asian man was in fact smuggling immigrants. The shop owner offers $500 for each. Anthony refuses and takes the immigrants to Chinatown where he releases them all. Driving away he avoids a crash involving Shaniqua. The film closes as those involved in the collision hurl racial insults at one another.

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