All of TVGuide.com Videos Only

Crash

1996, Movie, NC-17, 98 mins

Crash: Review

The term "autoerotica" takes on new meaning as dreamily disaffected couple James and Catherine (James Spader and Deborah Unger), who fuel their own sex life with extramarital escapades, get sucked into a carnal demolition derby. Driving home from work, James lets his attention wander and smashes headlong into the Remingtons' car, killing the driver and wounding his wife. James and Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) wind up in the same hospital, and are both sought out by the mysterious Vaughn (Elias Koteas). He introduces them to the perverse world of car-collision commandos, including the scarred, crippled Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette), who wears her elaborate medical brace like the latest in fetish gear. Adapted from J.G. Ballard's cult novel, a dispassionate exegesis of warped desire, Cronenberg's movie is suitably cold, cold, cold: proof positive that movies about sex aren't always sexy movies, at least by conventional standards. But it's seductive nonetheless, its eerie, icy eroticism embodied in Unger's sneaky sidelong glances -- she's always looking at some elusive something off to the side, just out of frame. The movie's weak link is Koteas, the seductive guru of chrome, flesh and glass. His Vaughn is creepy and insinuating without ever being seductive: Why would anyone want to play "Death of James Dean" with this guy? leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh