I can't really praise Crash too much either. It's melodramatic to the point of ridiculousness and very in your face. The main question is, what is wrong with being blatant? Every message that it wants to convey is said directly. There is no questioning what the movie is about. Everyone is racist, racism is incredibly complicated and bad. Hate breeds hate, but at the end of the day we are all human. Is subtlety really that much more valuable as a storytelling technique, that Crash is considered bad and Brokeback Mountain good due to it, even though they both boil down to the same theme of injustice? I guess that that comes down to personal taste. For my money, films are a visual medium above a storytelling medium, so being as explicit as possible is usually the right way to go.

I'd argue that the most disgusting scene in Brokeback Mountain, where Jack Twist is brutally murdered in a hate crime, is played off flippantly. It happens in eight seconds with quick cuts and distracting voiceover. There is the argument that this is happening in Ennis's imagination and Jack really did die in the accident that his wife describes, but for the sake of this article let's just assume the former is true. It lets you off the hook instead of making you witness the tragedy in order to make you tear up rather than face the music. What could have been a horrifying, thought provoking reality is forgotten soon after.

Crash does not have this problem. Every racial epithet and stereotype there is is thrown in your face over and over again. It's uncomfortable. It's disheartening. It's exaggerated, but it is real. You aren't crying during the opening scene of Selma. You don't have time to. When the young girls are exploded through the air in slow motion due to an act of white supremacist terrorism on a black church, you are stunned and disgusted. That really happened. Playing the moment out rather than shying away is the simplest way to make sure the audience understands the gravity of the situation. The loss of life is calculable, not just a moment in a movie to bring a tear to your eye.