Crossing Over

Crossing Over is similar in structure to 2004's ridiculously overpraised Crash, except this time all of the converging storylines feature legal and illegal immigrants to America. Both films weave an unlikely web of "we are the world" southern-California connections between a variety of nationalities and religions.

On the positive side, this means at least one segment should appeal to any individual taste. Don't like the plot about Gran Torino-esque gangbangers corrupting a Korean teen (Justin Chon)? Then check out the often unclothed Aussie (Alice Eve) sleeping her way to a green card with a piggish government bureaucrat (Ray Liotta). The creep's immigration attorney wife (Ashley Judd) is so earnest about adopting an orphan from Africa that she constantly wears a pendant shaped like the continent to remind us. Meanwhile, a Persian goth chick (Melody Khazae) likes hooking up with her Latino boss, and a Bangladeshi schoolgirl (Summer Bishil) lands in a big heap o' Homeland Security trouble over an essay presenting the 9/11 hijackers in a favorable light. Oops!

On the downside, both movies end up being more soap opera than serious drama, especially when writer-director Wayne Kramer amps up the proceedings with a predictable murder plot and a violent convenience store shootout. Also, Kramer's portrayal of America's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, and Border Patrol agents is so damning that those characters may as well be wearing Gestapo uniforms. You don't have to be a conservative nutcase to wish Crossing Over had included at least one character making a reasonable case against illegal immigration. (If there was a shot of an American taxpayer with his pockets turned inside-out standing next to an overcrowded school, an overflowing emergency room, or a six-to-a-cell prison, I must have missed it.) Everyone in charge of border security in this movie is officious, ineffective, sadistic, or corrupt.

The exception is burned-out ICE agent Max Brogan (Harrison Ford), who is merely hypocritical and self-loathing. "Good Nazi" Brogan takes part in factory raids that round up illegal workers, but he's compassionate enough to look disgusted with himself over it. When a Mexican woman that Brogan feels guilty about nabbing pleads that she has a son in daycare, Brogan personally chauffeurs the abandoned tyke to Mexico the next day. Unfortunately, because the screenplay has contrived to let so much time pass by then, the kid's incommunicado mother can't be found. Brogan assumes she must be trying to sneak back into America, and he spends the rest of the movie anguishing over whether she will make it.

In today's economic climate, it may be difficult for audiences to feel much empathy for squatters, agitators, and border-jumpers who want to take jobs away from God-fearing, red-blooded, flag-waving Americans. Especially when one of those jobs is a juicy TV-show acting role, like the one the hot illegal Aussie has landed.

After all, some of us who were born here still don't have Emmys ourselves.

—James Dawson
02.26.09

Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, and Ashley Judd star in Running Scared writer/director Wayne Kramer's harrowing look at life amongst illegal immigrants and the immigration enforcement agents whose job it is to ensure that the U.S. borders remain secure. Every day, a new batch of immigrants comes flooding into Los Angeles in search of the American dream -- and every day the price of that dream rises exponentially. As the desperation of these newcomers continually tests the humanity of Los Angeles immigration enforcement officers, the face of a 21st century L.A. gradually begins to take form. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi