Review of Crossing Over (2009) by Peter M — 17 Jan 2010

Alright, I admit it: it is possible to have too much of a good thing. I know I've gone on at some length about how amazing, gripping, and ingenious films like Crash, The Air I Breathe, and Vantage Point are because of their adept handling of multiple characters and storylines that have little to do with each other but intersect in interesting and emotional ways. And I stick to that opinion. But if you take that concept, scale its intensity back a bit, and focus it a bit too narrowly on the circumstance that makes those characters and storylines cut across each other to begin with, you tend to wind up with a well-meaning but somewhat ineffective film whose impact is much more hit-or-miss than universal. The 2008 film Fragments (review forthcoming) is a great example of this phenomenon: in juggling so many disparate storylines and characters, it lost a lot of its emotional impact. A similar statement could be made about Crossing Over.

Like the race issues in Crash, the ever-present spectre of illegal immigration could be seen and felt in every moment of Crossing Over. And like Crash, this film also did a solid job of portraying the desperation, desire and frank ugliness that many, many people reduce themselves to in order to live illegally in America and, hopefully, attain that magic green card. Lies, fraud, forgery, and prostitution were just the tip of the iceberg. It was easy to believe the pity and compassion in Harrison Ford's eyes, because the hopeless situations his character (a border patrol agent) saw were portrayed very realistically. Yet despite that, many of those situations seemed impersonal, unbelievable, or just lacked the emotional grip I think they were supposed to have. The movie's scattered group of characters and their sporadic connections had much to do with this flatness, as well as the fact that many of the characters were fairly one-dimensional even when their situations were not. And, frankly, watching the ugly side of human nature raise its head isn't all that fun when it isn't glamorized.

Along that line, the best parts of Crossing Over had nothing to do with the darkness in men's hearts. The best parts, the parts that made watching the rest of the film worth it, were the parts that involved kindness. Harrison Ford's character goes out of his way to find an immigrant child's family. Jim Sturgess pretends to be a rabbi to get a job in the States, gets caught in his pretense and has to perform part of a Jewish service in front of a real rabbi--and the real rabbi not only doesn't give him away, but invites him to come to his own temple. A teenage Asian boy has a change of heart in the middle of a convenience store robbery and turns on his confederates--and even though guns go off, the victims in the store tell the police that particular boy was not involved in the holdup. Ashley Judd's character, heartbroken over a little black girl's failure to be adopted, finally decides to adopt the girl herself. These moments are few and far between, and come fairly suddenly, but they show poignant glimpses of the emotional impact that the film was trying for but didn't quite make. They also make the movie worth a rental, if not necessarily a purchase.