Crossing Over (2009)
Directed by Wayne Kramer
Written by Wayne Kramer
Starring Harrison Ford. Cliff Curtis, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd
Release Date February 27th, 2009
Published February 28th, 2009
I'll give director Wayne Kramer this, he doesn't do things half way. His The Cooler thrived on heavy duty sexuality and grit. His follow-up, Running Scared was an adrenalized, hyper-caffeinated action movie that traded soully on style, zero substance. He's back at another extreme with his third feature; an immigration drama called Crossing Over.
With a great deal more substance than Running Scared, Crossing Over goes to another extreme as Kramer attempts to tell more stories than any one movie can stand.
Harrison Ford leads a wide ranging cast as immigration officer Max Brogan. With his partner Hamid (Cliff Curtis), Max leads raids on sweat shops and other underground locations where a large number of immigrants are centrally located. In one of these raids Max busts a young woman named Maria. She has a small child being cared for by a friend and she begs Max to find him and make sure he is cared for.
Meanwhile, running parallel to this story, all of which emanate in Los Angeles, for the most part, is the story of Gavin (Jim Sturgess) an Israeli immigrant on a visa soon to expire. Though an atheist, Gavin has managed to stay in the country posing as a religious scholar. He is in love with an Australian actress and immigrant named Claire. While his scam is vaguely plausible, she is going the fake documents route.
That path leads her to man named Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta) a bureaucrat at the immigration office who can help her. Help her he does after she agrees to have sex with him regularly for two months while he pushes her paperwork through. Cole is married to Denise (Ashley Judd) an immigration lawyer who defends people trying to stay in the country.
She is involved in the case of an Iranian family in which the teenage daughter incited a terror threat with a speech in her high school class saying she understood the 9/11 hijackers. Several more characters bounce in and out of frame but fail to register as well as the recognizable stars.
There is a worthy and moving drama somewhere in the morass of Crossing Over. Unfortunately, it's buried between too many subplots that crash (HA, Crash get it, multi-plotted Oscar winning drama crash) into one another but don't really connect beyond a very basic characteristic, all of them involve immigrants. For instance, one plot strand involves a Korean family who happen to be Max Brogan's regular dry cleaner.
Ashley Judd is a wonderful actress but her plot and that of the young Iranian girl are extraneous beyond belief. Kramer uses the girl basically to make a point about freedom of speech and thought and about post 9/11 paranoia. That's a powerful topic but it has little to do with the rest of the movie. Each of the character connections are tenuous at best, but Judd is beyond tenuous, she's in the movie for marquee value and little more.
Now, though I find fault with much of Crossing Over, especially Director Kramer's indulgent point making and lack of narrative focus, there are some powerful moments in Crossing Over. A standout is Ford's confrontation with his partner over a murder investigation. Ford's charisma and powerful emotional connections create and convey this scene beyond what it might be in the hands of a lesser actor.
Curtis himself has a powerful moment involving a convenience story robbery that gives him and the movie a moment of real depth and heart. Ray Liotta shines ever so briefly opposite Alice Eve's Claire in a scene where he drops the con man bit and reveals his true pain and hope for salvation. Her response is brave and shocking and if there were more to the plot behind it, it would have had some serious emotional repercussions.
Sadly, as happens throughout Crossing Over, good work gets lost amid the jumble of too many characters and too much plot.
Crossing Over is a valiant attempt to shine a light on the heartbreaking bureaucracy that is at the center of our immigration debate. It's a drama of great depth and emotion. Unfortunately, it's also indulgent bit of Oscar baiting aimed at capitalizing on the wave of big ensembles with big ideas. First it was Soderbergh's Traffic, all about drugs. Then it was Crash with racism. Now comes Crossing Over about immigration. The formula still has some juice but without the skill of a Soderbergh or a Haggis, the results are muted, reflecting the glory of those movies without earning any of its own.
