A Brief Chronology Of The Career Of Academy Award Winner Paul Haggis

1977 - Staff writer for The Love Boat.

1978 - Writer for Diff'rent Strokes.

1979 - Writer for Facts Of Life.

1993 - Creates Walker, Texas Ranger. Is not actually credited with writing any episodes, so we'll just have to assume it was his brilliant idea to have Chuck Norris walk around kicking people in the face.

2004 - Writes two grossly overrated screenplays;

The first one is a simplistic, paint-by-numbers girl boxer movie with an unbelievably transparent tacked on ending that was about as subtle of an attempt to get people talking around the water cooler as kicking your boss in the nuts. This boring, overly dramatic, stereotypical turd of a script was polished to a blinding shine by 3 people Hollywood loves to lineup to give blowjobs to, namely Clint, Morgan and Swank.

And finally, we come to his most offensive piece of work. A movie whose sole intention is to let everybody off the hook. From middle class blacks to yuppie asshole whites to racist rednecks. This movie is all about coddling adults and making them feel as though the racist tendencies that they have are inevitable and in some cases, warranted. I think Matt Dillon summed it up best on the red carpet before the Oscars. When talking about his character, a cartoonishly racist cop with about as much character depth as Snideley Whiplash, Dillon talks about how his character is all about 'polarity' and 'seeing both sides'. You see, because Haggis ham-fistedly threw in a couple lines about the cop taking care of his dying father and having to deal with uncooperative people, we get to see why he is the way he is. It's this kind of unapologetic victimizing of victimizers that makes this movie intolerable.

The message that filmmakers that tackle this topic need to convey is about as simple as can be; "If you are an asshole, fuck you. Change how you think or intelligent people will hate you.". Instead, this steaming pile of a movie gives us a 2 hour equivalent of Robin Williams clutching Will Hunting and repeating, "It's not your fault".

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can suck it.