Crossing Over

2009. Dir: Wayne Kramer. Starring: Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Jim Sturgess and Cliff Curtis. ●●○○○



I have tried to make allowances for watching the multi-storyline drama Crossing Over on video over the weekend, rather than at the cinema. I know that at home even if you're watching an excellent film your mind can wander off as you look at your bookcase or hear birdsong out of the window. However even being lenient the film, a remake of director Wayne Kramer's previous short, still fails on many levels.

The idea of taking a large number of parallel storylines to illustrate a point have been arond since the beginning of cinema. Grand Hotel with it's "galaxy of stars" and ideas of emotional equality (even with groups who are massively unequal socially) is a good example. The technique was later honed by Robert Altman - look at his masterpiece Nashville which confronts ideas of patriotism as well as cleverly interweaving 20+ rounded characterisations. The last 10 years have seen Crash and Syriana use this tool to highlight particular issues, and it's the critical succes of these films which probably led to Crossing Over being green-lighted.



Crossing Over does not compare well to any of the titles I've listed above. It aims to take a long hard look at U.S. immigration control and the dilemmas facing people at various stages of the process as well as the very essence of what it means to be American, however it shoehorns so many plots and characters in that the central conceit is muddled and many of the performances seem flat.

In a butchered 108 minutes (40 minutes less than Traffic, which it is clearly aiming to be - there must have been a lot more filmed than this) we have actresses selling their bodies for a green card, honour killings, the lure of gang violence, the effect of 9/11 on the freedom of speech, the disparity between immigrants of different cultural and economic backgrounds, I could go on. In reality any single issues addressed could have filled a movie of their own. I want to know understand more about the life experience of Summer Bishil's character, to find out how she has the confidence to speak out at the beginning. The family politics in Cliff Curtis' background would be more than enough to satisfy me.

So why do we get Ray Liotta gurning his way through every line, or sit through lots of time with Jim Sturgess' loveable Jewish rogue; is accent was all over the place, but at least the religion stays contant through the film.

Harrison Ford, clearly the marquee name for this, does an adequate job as a honorable man working for the immigration service but the stand out performances are Bishil and Curtis. Curtis in particular has a lot of heavy lifting to do, however the screenplay lets him go without the payoff he deserves.

Talking about the screenplay this is strictly plotting by numbers. From the first time we meet any of the characters we see virtually every side to them, with no-one going through an arc or showing any depth. Needless to say the end is also nicely resolved with all the loose ends tied off, the bad guys going to jail and the morally questionable ones getting their comeuppance.

Wayne Kramer can be an interesting director, the shoot out in the liquor store is tightly choreographed and the bleached flashbacks with unflinching sex and shocking violence are done with the same hard edge he used in Running Scared and The Cooler, however he needs to find a good thriller plot to hang his technique around and not waste time with passion projects like this.