Here we go again - yet another of those multi-storied social dramas set in the racial and cultural crazy-quilt that is modern-day Los Angeles. Falling somewhere on the quality scale between the profound "Grand Canyon" on the one end and the dreadful "Crash" on the other, "Crossing Over" relates a half dozen or so interlocking tales centered around the issue of immigration.
Harrison Ford is a compassionate INS agent who goes beyond the call of duty to help an undocumented single mother and her young son; Ashley Judd is an immigration defense attorney who wants to adopt a young African girl who's already spent 23 months in a detention center, the victim of a mountain of bureaucratic red tape; and Melody Khazae is a Muslim high school student whose seeming sympathy for the jihadist cause may make it impossible for her to remain in the country. And as if to prove that not all targets of immigration policy are ethnic minorities, Alice Eve is a blonde Australian actress who's having a dickens of a time renewing her visitor's visa. Also in the cast is Ray Liotta as an unprincipled, opportunistic adjudications officer who agrees to smooth over the actress's visa-renewal problems if she'll only sleep with him.
Though no one can deny that it starts off with the best of intentions, "Crossing Over" leaves much to be desired both as a human drama and as a social document. In an effort to weave the disparate narrative strands into a coherent whole, writer/director Wayne Kramer has intercut his scenes with endless birds'-eye-views of the city, a technique that does little to enhance the fluidity of the storytelling. And despite the best efforts of a dedicated cast, the movie never inspires us to care about the people or issues it's laying out before us. In fact, "Crossing Over" errs in the opposite direction of the overwrought "Crash" by rarely displaying any genuine passion for its subject, seeming instead to be simply going through the motions to make its points.
Perhaps as a result of the limited screen time allotted to each character, no one individual emerges from the pack to engage our sympathy or interest. The characters feel more like pawns in a polemicist's exercise than fully-rounded people in their own right. And there's a scene involving a convenience store holdup that is every bit as contrived and credibility-defying as anything in "Crash."
But, hey, give "Crossing Over" a little credit. It's the only movie I know of that gives a nod to the Internet Movie Database (known by most of us as IMDb). Surely, it gets some points for that!
Harrison Ford is a compassionate INS agent who goes beyond the call of duty to help an undocumented single mother and her young son; Ashley Judd is an immigration defense attorney who wants to adopt a young African girl who's already spent 23 months in a detention center, the victim of a mountain of bureaucratic red tape; and Melody Khazae is a Muslim high school student whose seeming sympathy for the jihadist cause may make it impossible for her to remain in the country. And as if to prove that not all targets of immigration policy are ethnic minorities, Alice Eve is a blonde Australian actress who's having a dickens of a time renewing her visitor's visa. Also in the cast is Ray Liotta as an unprincipled, opportunistic adjudications officer who agrees to smooth over the actress's visa-renewal problems if she'll only sleep with him.
Though no one can deny that it starts off with the best of intentions, "Crossing Over" leaves much to be desired both as a human drama and as a social document. In an effort to weave the disparate narrative strands into a coherent whole, writer/director Wayne Kramer has intercut his scenes with endless birds'-eye-views of the city, a technique that does little to enhance the fluidity of the storytelling. And despite the best efforts of a dedicated cast, the movie never inspires us to care about the people or issues it's laying out before us. In fact, "Crossing Over" errs in the opposite direction of the overwrought "Crash" by rarely displaying any genuine passion for its subject, seeming instead to be simply going through the motions to make its points.
Perhaps as a result of the limited screen time allotted to each character, no one individual emerges from the pack to engage our sympathy or interest. The characters feel more like pawns in a polemicist's exercise than fully-rounded people in their own right. And there's a scene involving a convenience store holdup that is every bit as contrived and credibility-defying as anything in "Crash."
But, hey, give "Crossing Over" a little credit. It's the only movie I know of that gives a nod to the Internet Movie Database (known by most of us as IMDb). Surely, it gets some points for that!