Movie Review: 'Crash' (1997)

For a movie obsessed with the connection between sexual intercourse and car accidents, David Cronenberg's ''shocking'' mood piece could hardly be more stationary. The characters sit in cars, seduce each other in cars, and stare, as if hypnotized, at films of cars. And what, exactly, are they obsessed with? Death? Mutilation? The thrill of black vinyl seat covers? Adapted from J.G. Ballard's 1973 novel, Crash unfolds as a series of cryptic art-porn postures. Cronenberg reduces his actors to glazed auto-erotomatons. In the end, the film's folly is that there simply is no link between eroticism and car crashes. C-