Review of Crossing Over (2009) by Kenneth L — 09 Apr 2009

Bleeding heart liberalism seldom translates on film without coming across didactic, naive, manipulative and downright annoying. One would only have to see cousin films like Crash and Babel to know that while well-intentioned, the lines between melodrama and nuance, self importance and complexity are razor thin, and doing all the work for a target audience aged twelve is no way to make a film about race, communication, or in this case, immigration.

Director Kramer would do better to study the master of the ensemble mosaic like Robert Altman or even PT Anderson, than to model his film on Crash or Babel. Never didactic, always nuanced and with a firm ironic sense of humor, Altman presented complex scenarios never presuming to forward an agenda, always thought provoking, and often tongue firmly in cheek. His characters were always fully realized and multi-dimensional, never easily dismissed as archetypes, never feeling contrived, never symbols or cogs in a wheel of a screenplay. The characters were always treated sympathetically without turning maudlin and the situations that he presented to them always grew out of their circumstance - never forced. And therein laid Altman's genius. He understood his characters before pointing the way - IF indeed he did.

One gets the nagging feeling that underlying Kramer's rather simplistic politics is a more sinister cynicism about human nature - that migrants are all either victims or perpetrators of violence in one form or another; Or worse, that all his characters exist in a duality as subtle as a sledgehammer. We have the 'seasoned' immigration customs enforcement agent (Harrison Ford) getting soft, whose peer pressure leads him to give up a mexican illegal immigrant to the authorities. Then there's the lecherous seasoned INS bureaucrat (Ray Liotta) who promises a green card to an equally desperate Australian actress (Alice Eve), only to confess, after a month of coerced fucking, naively that he would leave his wife to be with her. That's not to mention that this same Australian actress, with no green card in hand, would dare confront him about his naivete, or that his wife played by the sexy Ashley Judd would be such an obvious bore to him. Huh?

Time and time again, Kramer trades true compassion and dexterous examination for convenience and expediency, which, in a film that purports to explore the human aspects of immigration and its impacts, ends up ironically exploitative and manipulative. This is a pity, because the better aspects of the film get clouded by its inexpert contrivances. Summer Bishil's turn as a 15 year old Muslim girl who jeopardises her family's status with a naive report on terrorism is gut-wrenching, and her story is perhaps most fully realized, even if her fellow students are demonstrably abusive and the FBI come cataclysmically knocking on her door. The film is designed to push buttons, not prompt thoughtful introspection, and the film surrenders to this over and over again; the honor killing of an iranian family, the korean teenager succumbs to peer pressure... the list goes on.

The saving grace of the film is in its performances most notably from the up and coming actors Bishil and UK native Alice Eve, who holds the screen with Liotta in scenes that popped surprisingly despite its clumsy dialogue. And despite Kramer's tendency to bludgeon his audiences' heads with overstatement (even the pick ups were odd and unnecessary to the point of insulting - the inexplicable shot of Hamid placing dollar bills on the bar counter after a night of drinking, or the exagerrated close up of his sister's bracelet after she gives Ford a light to his cigarette,or Claire's crying in the shower), he does get away with genuine moments. Taslima's departure is particularly effective.

Stick to Dirty Pretty Things for a human face on immigration. And as they say in film school, always do films about subjects that one knows/cares a little something about. The result otherwise, is always forced and patronizing.