Crossing Over (2 Stars)

by Michael Phillips

 

"Crossing Over" crisscrosses Southern California, using overhead shots of freeways as section breaks, covering an ambitious variety of green-card tales of woe, establishing so many intersecting lines of fate and circumstance that halfway through you wonder:

Is this film going to include every single Angeleno who wasn't in "Crash"?

Writer-director Wayne Kramer, who fared better with his wry Vegas fable "The Cooler," wastes no time establishing the tough-but-sensitive street cred of his entry-point character, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official played by Harrison Ford.

"Everything is a (damn) humanitarian crisis with you!" a colleague scolds him, after an ICE raid on a garment factory staffed with undocumented Latino workers, one of whom, played by Alice Braga, pleads with him to look after her son after she's arrested.

Meantime: Green-card adjudicator Ray Liotta, whose very presence suggests malicious intent at best and sociopathology at worst, indulges in sexual blackmail with hotsy-totsy Australian starlet Alice Eve, eager to pursue her tarnished showbiz dream.

Meantime meantime: Liotta's wife, immigration attorney Ashley Judd, wages a battle to protect a Koran-fed young firebrand played by Summer Bishil from unjust deportation.

Ford, who chugs through "Crossing Over" looking displeased with the dialogue, has a powder keg of a partner, himself a symbol of cultural dislocation. Cliff Curtis plays agent Hamid Baraheri, an Iranian-American whose high-living, heavily Americanized sister figures heavily in the mystery at the heart of the narrative.

The movie does not lack for heart, or honest concern for the plight of so many newcomers to America, legal or illegal.

What it lacks is moment-to-moment credibility. The characters don't relate; they trade expedient expository nuggets, when they're not speechifying. A surfeit of coincidence spoils our empathy. And when a character -- any character -- says, "You doubt the veracity of my heart," you have to doubt the veracity of the script.

There's a two-time Oscar-winning performer whose work in "Crossing Over" you won't be seeing.

Sean Penn shot a couple of scenes as an immigration cop and, according to some reports, may have arm-twisted the Weinstein Company into leaving him on the cutting-room floor. What's left is more than enough in terms of incident and a densely packed character roster. In fact, I haven't mentioned third-billed Jim Sturgess, who plays the Aussie's fellow green-card-seeker, who tries to pass himself off as a devout Jewish musician down at the U.S. immigration office, where he just happens to run into a rabbi who ... well.

Enough.

The film is too much, and it has breathing trouble. For a sharper dramatic execution of a similarly panoramic slice of life, see "Traffic." Better yet, see the British miniseries that led to the American remake.

 

 

Crossing Over MPAA rating: R (for pervasive language, some strong violence and sexuality/nudity).

Running time: 1:53.

Starring: Harrison Ford (Max Brogan); Jim Sturgess (Gavin Kossef); Ray Liotta (Cole Frankel); Ashley Judd (Denise Frankel); Cliff Curtis (Hamid Baraheri).

Written and directed by Wayne Kramer; produced by Frank Marshall and Wayne Kramer. A Weinstein Company release.

 

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