Grand Canyon (1991)

Excavating my library of VHS:s, I find many movies that I've seen a long time ago that I remember having liked, but the only thing I can actually recall is some sort of atmosphere. What I remember about Grand Canyon is its slow pace and depiction of the urban jungle where almost any situation can take a dangerous turn. Re-watching it, this proved to be a quite apt description. What I didn't remember is the many clichés, the horrible music and a "social" agenda that is so rediculously over-stated that this film is, at times, rather embarrassing to watch. There are, however, some nice scenes, too. In one of them, we see a father teaching his son to drive a car. The boy is not really focusing on the driving. He talks to his father about family problems. The father is nervous. They end up in a messy traffic hub. The boy is supposed to make a left turn. Red light. We see the boy's impatience and the anxious expression on his father's face. It's time to press the speed pedal. But another car swooshes by and the boy reacts too slowly. A severe car accident is avoided in the last second. In this scene, the director, Lawrence Kasdan, makes the best of the actors and the surrounding. The scene is simple, but it works. It is not too talky, there's music (I think), but it's discreet. Here, Kasdan has discovered the exact pitch for conveying a sense of, first, foreboding and, later, a real and very concrete sense of fear.

But Mr. Kasdan; if I were you, I would have sued Paul Haggis' (director of Crash) ass. As a matter of fact, Grand Canyon is a thousand times better than Crash. At its best, it really has something to say about urban fear. Which Crash doesn't.