Review of Crossing Over (2009) by Suraj K — 20 Jul 2009

Harrison Ford in a movie that got a bare-bones theatrical release and grossed less than a half million dollars before being dumped onto DVD?! It happened! However, even though this film has an excellent cast all around, it was pretty much doomed once Sean Penn demanded his entire part to be cut out, forcing some extensive trims and re-edits and making the finished product feel choppy and unfocused.

There are some very good performances, intriguing plotlines, and powerful moments which make the film worth watching, but as a whole, it does get pretty heavy-handed at times and relies an awful lot on contrivances and coincidences.

Writer-director Wayne Kramer's last film "Running Scared", also relied a lot on coincidences, but since it was so ridiculous and over-the-top, it didn't really matter; however, since this film is obviously trying to be the next "Crash" and say something really important, its narrative problems prevent it from being entirely successful.