(2009)
2
Derek Armstrong
Crossing Over successfully follows the template established by Traffic, Babel, Crash, and Fast Food Nation for sociopolitical drama across multiple demographics. But you wouldn't know it from the film's box-office performance. It couldn't clear a half-million dollars domestically, a strange outcome indeed for a movie featuring one of the most bankable stars of the last three decades in Harrison Ford. Writer-director Wayne Kramer deserved a larger audience for his timely examination of the harsh realities of U.S. immigration law, which represents a personal graduation from stylish genre films (The Cooler, Running Scared) to more prestigious, serious subject matter. Crossing Over isn't always subtle, and perhaps the prospect of all that feel-bad moralizing turned some viewers away. But the film does engagingly present an array of topical issues, starting with the political hot potato at the Mexican border, and expanding outward to others we rarely hear about. Kramer also offers up a teenage girl threatened with deportation for her rhetorical stance in a school project, a Korean gangbanger who may be killed before he's naturalized, and even an Australian actress attempting to overstay her work visa. There's some level of melodrama in the way these case studies play out, but they make a useful snapshot of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses America once welcomed without hesitation. Kramer finds the shades of gray in his talented cast, particularly Cliff Curtis as an Iranian-born INS agent, Ray Liotta as a sleazy immigration officer, Alice Eve as the Australian ingenue, and Summer Bishil as the Bangladeshi teen whose schoolwork flags her as an Islamic extremist. Only the unremittingly glum Ford isn't very nuanced, but that works well as a conscious choice for his character, who's spiritually broken by a lifetime of raiding workplaces and crushing dreams.
Crossing Over on AllMovie
Crossing Over (2009)
