The only debate that Crossing Over will inspire is whether or not it's supreme awfulness is enough to qualify it for so-bad-its-good status.
Crossing Over (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:102
Fresh:16
Rotten:86
Average Rating:4.1/10
Consensus: Crossing Over is flagrant and heavy-handed about a situation that deserves more deliberate treatment, and joins its characters with coincidences that strain believability.
Synopsis: The struggle to achieve resident alien status, or gain full-blown citizenship in the United States, provides some thought-provoking material in this feature from director Wayne Kramer(THE COOLER).... The struggle to achieve resident alien status, or gain full-blown citizenship in the United States, provides some thought-provoking material in this feature from director Wayne Kramer(THE COOLER). CROSSING OVER is an ensemble piece that contains many overlapping storylines, most of which revolve around Max Brogan (Harrison Ford), a law enforcement official who specializes in arresting people who break stringent immigration laws. Joining Ford is Ray Liotta, who plays a corrupt immigration official who forces a wannabe Australian actress (Alice Eve) to sleep with him in exchange for a green card. The film also focuses on the rigorous guidelines laid down in post-9/11 America, with Kramer detailing the shocking maltreatment of a teenage girl who faces deportation after giving a misguided high school presentation on terrorism. These tales, and several others, all combine to present an intricate overview of the desperate and often overwhelmingly sad lengths people will go to so they can remain in the United States. Kramer’s film closely mirrors other harrowing ensemble pieces such as Paul Haggis’s CRASH (2004) and Richard Linklater’s FAST FOOD NATION (2006). CROSSING OVER carefully presents many different sides of this complicated issue and also examines how coincidence and good fortune can play a part in achieving resident status. Ford is perfectly cast as the downcast lead character who battles with the moral and ethical ramifications of his job, and frequently gets too close to the people he is required to prosecute. Kramer skillfully interweaves each tale and allows just enough screen time to each of his characters, with Cliff Curtis leading the excellent supporting cast by playing an Iranian-American immigration official whose life is irrevocably altered by a series of tragic personal and professional occurrences. [More]
Starring: Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Cliff Curtis
Starring: Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Cliff Curtis, Jim Sturgess, Alice Eve, Alice Braga, Justin Chon, Summer Bishil
Director: Wayne Kramer
Director: Wayne Kramer
Screenwriter: Wayne Kramer
Producer: Frank Marshall, Wayne Kramer, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein
Composer: Mark Isham
Studio: Weinstein Company
Reviews for Crossing Over
The issue of illegal immigration deserves a thoughtful movie. This isn't it.
This all sounds didactic and silly. It is. It's also highly watchable, and simultaneously complex, simple-minded, and deferential to the audience's base level of intelligence.
Crossing Over has hurtled into Crash territory, and the smash-up is not a happy collision.
Immigration seems more like a pure humanitarian issue than a political, legal, social and economic knot struggling to be untied.
Let this be the last of a kind of cloying, paranoid cinema we should all be sick and tired of.
A multi-strand saga whose contrived, inane narrative threads have been stitched together with Frankenstein ungainliness.
Eventually, all points converge on a finale draped in patriotic imagery employed for maximum irony.
That its climax comes in the middle of a rendition of the national anthem -- at a citizenship ceremony, no less -- tells you how badly it pins the needle on the subtlety meter.
This politically-minded ensemble drama's obvious attempts at being Traffic or Crash barely gets out of the garage before it stalls in neutral.
Crossing Over may hold some appeal for those who loved Crash, but this is a diluted cousin to a film that was overrated in the first place.
Director Wayne Kramer crisscrosses these stories into a diverting anthropological melodrama, with enough coincidence to keep the action unified.
This focus on uneasy spiritual and political transformation runs into thematic banality. Although more than a set of patchwork, Crash-like homilies, Crossing Over is almost as didactic.
And if you thought Crash and Babel were preachy and awful, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Crossing Over crosses into the mythic realm of camp. What a waste. I still say it’s better than Crash, though.
Harrison Ford does a very different sort of reluctant, discombobulated thinking man's action hero this time around, a kinder, gentler immigration cop not into raids, and mocked by his colleagues as an INS girlie guy.
Though timely and well-intentioned, this immigrants saga is too contrived and schematic to generate credibility or feeling for the characters and will suffer in comparison with other crisscrossing L.A. stories such as Crash.
An overweeningly deterministic mosaic of U.S. immigration case studies.
While the finished product is by no means a disaster, it does bear the marks of a film whose lofty aspirations have been tarnished by uneven storytelling and simplistic moral conclusions.
Latest News for Crossing Over
June 08, 2009:
RT on DVD: Gran Torino, Crossing Over, Nobel Son Exclusive Look
This week on DVD, celebrate the big screen heroics of two former movie heroes (Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, Harrison Ford in Crossing Over) or watch Clive Owen and Naomi Watts... More...
March 01, 2009:
Harrison Ford does a very different sort of reluctant, discombobulated thinking man's action hero this time around, a kinder, gentler immigration cop not into raids, and mocked by his colleagues as an INS girlie guy. ![]()
More...
February 26, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Jonas Brothers Fizzles
This week at the movies, we've got teenybop pop (Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience, starring Jonas Brothers) and a video game adaptation (Street Fighter: The Legend of... More...
November 26, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review ![]()
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