Crossing Over (2009)
Average Rating: 4.1/10
Reviews Counted: 106
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 89
Crossing Over is flagrant and heavy-handed about a situation that deserves more deliberate treatment, and joins its characters with coincidences that strain believability.
Average Rating: 4.4/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 31
Crossing Over is flagrant and heavy-handed about a situation that deserves more deliberate treatment, and joins its characters with coincidences that strain believability.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 50,000
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Movie Info
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
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Cast
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Harrison Ford
Max Brogan -
Ashley Judd
Denise Frankel -
Ray Liotta
Cole Frankel -
Cliff Curtis
Hamid Baraheri -
Jim Sturgess
Gavin Kossef -
Alice Braga
Mireya Sanchez -
Alice Eve
Claire Shepard -
Justin Chon
Yong Kim -
Summer Bishil
Taslima Jahangir -
Melody Khazae
Zahra Baraheri -
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Lizzy Caplan
Marla -
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Crossing Over Trailer & Photos
All Critics (106) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (89)
Any one of these stories, if properly fleshed out and shorn of contrivance, would have made for a perfectly serviceable film. Instead, we have lots of hysterical little bits of nothing much.
Top CriticThere are good performances here, but the sheer number dilutes their power, leaving the movie a bit of a mess.
You see, it's all a bit too interlocking, a cable series jammed into a couple of hours.
[Crossing Over] has a paint-by-numbers quality.
Part of the reason why Crossing Over doesn't work is that too many of the hurdles [director] Kramer places in front of his protagonists often feel like the product of a writer's imagination instead of real-life experiences.
The film is so choppy, especially in the final going, it appears that entire reels have been cut.
Multicultural hot pot boils over into farce.
The film manages to sustain a general air of dull preachiness without ever having much to say for itself.
It's compassionate, decent-minded and highly watchable, but as angry, heavy-handed and overemphatic as a rubber stamp crashing down on an immigration form.
Being over-stuffed and heavy-handed are not even Crossing Over's biggest problems. That dubious honour goes to an absolute failure to address its nominal subject-matter in any meaningful way.
While the film certainly has some viable, provocative points to make about the US's attitudes to migrants and the labyrinthine horrors of getting citizenship, it lacks the subtlety and eloquence it really needs to succeed.
For anyone who felt that Crash was too subtle and self-effacing, I recommend Crossing Over, a multi-stranded, heavy handed exploration of the issues surrounding immigration and US citizenship.
Crass, contrived, tackily salacious and politically loaded in the most insidious way, this dodgy piece of nonsense purports to be an ensemble, multi-stranded drama in the style of Traffic or Crash.
The whole exercise feels exploitative.
Well-acted but increasingly either melodramatic or just plain dull.
Crossing Over builds purposefully before derailing completely in its finale.
Although it has moments of poignancy, his sledgehammer approach is sometimes off-putting and risible.
Hampered by wayward direction and a skin-deep script, this won't be following Crash to the Academy podium. If you loved Haggis' Oscar victor, you might squeeze an iota of enlightenment out of Kramer's copycat melodrama.
Writer-director Wayne Kramer insists on trying to tell us all the way through what we should feel. Yet, by the end, it's not clear what he's trying to say: are U.S. immigration laws unfair, unnecessary or badly enforced?
The whole thing's about as enjoyable as a holiday to Guantanamo Bay. Less a movie and more a two-hour finger wag.
You can be too right-on. And that's the problem with this smug Hollywood multi-strand drama about immigration that sweats self-righteousness from every pore.
As with many multi-character pieces, it's somewhat unbalanced by its competing storylines, and its lapses into sentimentality seem inevitable, but Kramer deserves credit for taking on a touchy subject.
Audience Reviews for Crossing Over
Super Reviewer
It's not as good as the previous films mentioned but a decent effort and some good performances by Ford and a real sleazy Ray Liotta.
Super Reviewer
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Latest News on Crossing Over
June 8, 2009:
RT on DVD: Gran Torino, Crossing Over, Nobel Son Exclusive LookThis week on DVD, celebrate the big screen heroics of two former movie heroes (Clint Eastwood in...
February 26, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Jonas Brothers FizzlesThis week at the movies, we've got teenybop pop (Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience,...
November 13, 2008:
Trailer Bulletin: Crossing OverWhat is the price for crossing over? You can find out by watching the just-released trailer for the...
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Foreign Titles
- Droit de passage (FR)
- Territorio prohibido (ES)
