Crossing Over is flagrant and heavy-handed about a situation that deserves more deliberate treatment, and joins its characters with coincidences that strain believability.
Crossing Over is flagrant and heavy-handed about a situation that deserves more deliberate treatment, and joins its characters with coincidences that strain believability.
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
There's more genuine conviction in Ford's face, more complexity, honesty and ability to incite compassion, than everything else in Crossing Over combined.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Harrison Ford the whip cracking hero of old can hardly pick a good film to save himself these days but Crossing Over is decent effort. He plays an immigration officer controlling the border of Mexico but his job is only a small part of the bigger picture of immigrants entering America. The film is similiar to "Crash"
and "Traffic" in that, there are many characters who intertwine in each others lives and the impact the decisions they make have on others.
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.
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