Review of Crossing Over (2009) by Reyna R — 02 Jul 2009

Honestly, the only reason I rented this movie was because it starred Harrison Ford, and I expected the usual from him. It turned out to be so much more, and though Ford does a good job in his role, it was the ensemble cast that delivered incredibly moving performances.

Harrison Ford plays LA-based ICE agent Max Brogan whose job entails carrying out raids on places that employ undocumented aliens. In contrast to the demands of his job in pursuing and capturing the illegals, Max has a soft heart, following up on those illegals that he captures, especially in special cases. One such case involves a young Mexican alien [Alice Braga] who upon arrest, begs Max to check up on her young son, left in the care of a ruthless money-minded woman. Max refuses her, but later his conscience gets the better of him and he gets the boy back to his grandparents in Mexico, only to find the mother has gone missing.

This is one of the many story arcs that fuse this complex movie together, ala Crash, Traffic, Babel etc, but never throughout the movie, did I find this confusing. In fact, the story arcs all come together eventually, and the result is one gripping, emotionally powerful movie. There is the story of a Korean family where the eldest son is facing an identity crisis of sorts, soon to be naturalized yet not really appreciating its significance, much to his father's disappointment. There's the British Jewish guy who aspires to be a singer but finds himself desperate to get legal status, resorting to working in a Jewish school though he considers himself an atheist. There's the young Aussie actress [Alice Eve] hoping to make it big in America, but overstaying her visit, and finding herself at the mercy of an unscrupulous immigration adjudicator [Ray Liotta in yet another sleazeball role]. Ashley Judd [also playing Liotta's clueless wife] plays a compassionate immigration attorney who expends all her efforts helping those who need her services. One such person is 15-year-old Taslima, a Muslim girl [Summer Bishil of "Towelhead" delivering an emotionally gut-wrenching performance] who is taken into custody by the Feds because of a controversial paper she wrote in school about the 9/11 suicide bombers, a paper that sympathizes with the courage [though not the motives] of the killers. Being an undocumented alien, she and her undocumented parents face imminent deportation, leaving her family's future uncertain.

And finally, there's another story arc that deals with an Iranian American woman who faces the disapproval of her conservative family over her overly Westernized way of life. She also happens to be Max's partner's sister, and when she is found murdered, other facts come to light which causes Max to question his partner's motives.

It may appear that there are too many story arcs here to merit sufficient development or characterization, but I found the stories were well-told, the characters as played by the actors were credibly developed and portrayed and the stories eventually blended well together, engaging my attention on an intellectual and emotional level.There are no absolute happy endings here, but a mixture of pleasing outcomes together with the tragic. It is one of the most riveting, thought-provoking dramas I've seen this year.