Crossing Over

Plot synopsis:
(Note: There are several stories interwoven throughout the movie. For simplicity, they are separated out in this description, each with its own paragraph.)
After immigrant Mireya Sanchez is deported, ICE / Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Max Brogan takes care of her little son and brings him to the boy's grandparents in Mexico. Later the woman is found dead near the border. Brogan returns to the grandparents to tell them the bad news.
Taslima Jahangir, a 15-year-old girl from Bangladesh, presents a paper at school promoting that people should try to understand the 9/11 hijackers. The school principal reports this to authorities. FBI agents raid the home and ransack the girl's room, reading her diaries and a school assignment on the ethics of suicide; they criticize her room as "too austere" and note that she has an account on an Islamic website. The profiler says this makes her look like a would-be suicide bomber. Taslima is not charged for this, but it turns out that she stays in the United States illegally. She was born in Bangladesh and brought to the United States at age three. Taslima's continued presence jeopardizes her chances and puts at risk her two younger siblings, who are US citizens because they were born in the country. Denise Frankel, the immigration defense attorney, suggests that instead of the whole family's being deported, Taslima can leave for Bangladesh with her mother while the rest of the family stays in the U.S.
Cole Frankel, an immigration examiner/officer, gets into a car accident with Claire Shepard, an aspiring actress from Australia. Realizing that she is in the country illegally, Cole makes an arrangement with Claire whereby she will have unlimited sex with him for three months in exchange for a green card. When Cole eventually says he wants to leave his wife for Claire, she makes it clear that she holds him in contempt and is only sleeping with him for the green card. In a moment of clarity, Cole exempts Claire from completing the three months and arranges for her to get her green card in the mail. Special Agents from the ICE / Office of Inspector General eventually confront Claire about the suspiciousness in her immigration paperwork, and she admits to the sexual arrangement she had with Cole and leaves the country "voluntarily". Cole is arrested by ICE/OIG for corruption. His wife Denise Frankel adopts a little girl from Nigeria, who has already been in the detention center for 23 months.
Brogan has a colleague, Hamid Baraheri. His family disapproves of his sister's having sex with Javier Pedroza, a married man. Encouraged by his father, Farid Baraheri (Hamid's brother) plans to scare the couple, but things get out of hand: he shoots both of them, and goes to Hamid, who helps him hide the evidence. Brogan slowly suspects Hamid's involvement as the film progresses.
Javier Pedroza worked in a copy shop and made extra money by providing counterfeit immigration papers. Claire had previously paid him for false papers before she had made her arrangement with Cole. But when Javier was killed, the authorities discovered her documents among his belongings, leading the immigration team to examine Claire's case more closely.
South Korean teenager Yong Kim is about to be naturalized with the rest of his family, but he has started to hang out with a bad crowd and ultimately participates in a convenience store robbery to "pop his cherry" with his gang. Hamid happens to be at the same convenience store and kills the other robbers but (due to his own guilt over his involvement in his sister's death) lets Yong Kim go free.
Gavin Kossef, Claire's boyfriend and an atheist Jewish musician from the United Kingdom, pretends to be a religious Jew in order to get a job at a Jewish school, which allows him to stay in the U.S. When reporting to an immigration office, the immigration examiner/officer makes him demonstrate his familiarity with the Jewish religion in front of a rabbi visiting for other purposes – Kossef chants poorly but the rabbi gives his approval. After the test, in private, the rabbi requires Kossef to bring his "wonderful" voice to temple and to take lessons from him to eliminate the deficiencies in his knowledge.
Brogan investigates Hamid's sister and sister's boyfriend's murders. He finds proof of Farid's guilt in the murders and Hamid's guilt in the cover-up. Disgusted by Hamid's and Farid's actions he turns the evidence over to the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD arrests Farid for two counts of murder and Hamid as an accessory to two murders after the fact.

Tags: murder, flashback

Review:
Writer-director Wayne Kramer examines the issues behind the illegal immigrant problem in USA who are either trying to lay low in avoiding the law, or trying their best to gain legal residency with each experiencing different challenges that lie ahead in their quest.And it's quite ambitious for Kramer to try and pull off no less than seven parallel threads in the film, which to a certain extent I felt was largely successful, despite some being almost peripheral if not for the presence of a recognized star.
Anchored by Harrison Ford as Max Brogan, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, the film weaves in and out of the different threads without feeling too forced, or the need for some compulsory and carefully designed moments to link the stories up intricately.
There's an illegal Mexican woman (a very short role by Alice Braga) who begs Ford's Max to look after her young son in the care of unfriendly relatives, a Jewish musician (Jim Sturgess) who's waiting to qualify for residency and willing to do just anything to get there, his Australian girlfriend (Alice Eve) and Hollywood actress wannabe who had granted 2 months worth of on-demand sexual favours to an Immigration official (Ray Liotta) in exchange for a green card, whose wife (Ashley Judd) wants to adopt a child placed in a detention centre, who meets an Iranian girl (Summer Bishil whose essay failed to condemn the terrorists of 9/11 and gotten her and her family into hot soup.
And since the law is fixed (and sometimes perverse by those who interpret it), and justice blind, I suppose there are times we may be compelled to lend a hand to a stranger out of nothing but on humanitarian grounds, in doing what's right and decent for a fellow human being.Crossing Over presents many of such situations and while it may be a mixed bag in its narrative, it certainly pushes the right buttons with its star-studded ensemble cast in making the audience think about, empathize with, and examine if the issues presented could have existed in the local context, with similar challenges in the treatment of those who are illegal immigrants..
At the end of the day Taslima's possible terrorist sympathies are left ambiguous, neither confirmed or disproved, and that is why I think a lot of less intelligent viewers jump to the same conclusion that the fictional official does by filling in the blanks that they desire to see because they do not wish to have a dialog about a difficult subject.The only disappointing part of the movie for me was the Harrison Ford storyline.
Unlike Crash, another recent disparate-people-dealing-with-a-sociological-issue movie, Crossing Over is poignant, stirring, and rousing, capturing what must be the wrenching experience of being an immigrant, legal or otherwise, in the United States.
Although the movie can be very difficult to watch at times, owing to its subject matter, it's a tough-minded look at the often-tragic issue of immigration.Ford plays Max Brogan, an INS agent stationed in Los Angeles, who decides to help an illegal textile worker (Alice Braga) by making sure that the woman's son is taken to his grandmother (the woman's mother) in Mexico when the woman is detained.
In a parallel storyline, a young Korean youth, days before his family's naturalization ceremony, makes a decision that could have terrible consequences.All of these story lines are intricately intertwined, but here's where the movie differs from Crash: the interactions of the various characters never feel forced or insincere, and the characters themselves are not simple good people doing bad things or bad people doing good things.The acting is uniformly grand.
CROSSING OVER, as written and  directed by Wayne Kramer, forces us to learn just how treacherous the  matter of immigration is on every level - from the border incidents, to  document fraud, to worksite enforcement/raiding, to the concept of  asylum, to naturalization, the green card process, the problematic  office of counter terrorism, and finally to the basic cultural clashes  that pit compassionate law officers against red neck raider type  officers.
first things first; to me it seems that this movie only attempts to cash in on the success that "crash" has had 2-3 years back.on the surface the feature has some good performances(the boring professional sort if you ask me) and 1 good scene( Cliff Curtis -the supermarket) but everything else is a cliché, and of the worst kind; trying hard to please the American viewer as in how he would LIKE to FEEL(in general) but not how the reality IS; this aspect would be OK but as part in the "fiction" category, and not as advertised - "realistic" drama"...
"Crossing Over" is an exploitative, cliché-filled, wannabe "topical" movie that's basically lifted from "Crash" (with elements of "Babel" and "Grand Canyon", two MUCH better movies, thrown in.) It manages to combine the horribly aged faces of Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, and Ashley Judd (all of whom clearly had boat payments to make) with the usually fine Cliff Curtis and a supporting cast of "who-dats".
We can change the laws by voting for politicians who can make a difference.I just think this sappy movie turns a blind eye on the consequences for allowing illegal immigrants to live and work here, and focuses entirely on the consequences for them getting caught by the authorities.
The moment I heard that girl defend the 9/11 terrorists, I couldn't take this f****ng movie serious, nobody in their right minds can defend somebody that kills knowingly 3,000 innocent civilians, you may defend them driving in a plane in the pentagon to make their voice heard-but an EMPTY plane-not full of innocent passengers-an empty plane in an empty twin towers in middle the night-no there's no justification to target civilians even to get your f****ng voice heard, if you'd pay me a million dollars I wouldn't let my kid play that ugly part, I can't believe Harrison Ford would act in this, this writer can probably understand blowing up a school full of innocent children in Serbia (or wherever that happened)so voices be heard, I pray to god that this doesn't portray the mindset of the average Muslim in the US otherwise we're deeply in trouble!!!
Also, how can you compare this to "CRASH" which is a gem and doesn't try to get your solidarity with people doing thing the illegal way, crossed over borders illegally, how painful it is, and this movie shows just how painful it can be, I have no place in my heart for THIS PAIN!
It is not a good augury to examine the tortuous road the film Crossing Over followed until its release.Originally made as a 2 and a half hour movie, Crossing Over was kept "in the shelves" for almost 2 years, while director and screenwriter Wayne Kramer was fighting to preserve his vision; he eventually had to bow himself and accept to edit it into a 113 minutes movie in order to avoid a straight-to-DVD release.And even like that, it only enjoyed a ride on art-house cinemas and film festivals, where it did not receive a very good answer before being exported to the rest of the world, where it was released in cinemas on some countries and straight-to-DVD on other ones (like mine).Unfortunately, the bad augury is justified...Crossing Over is a mediocre and tedious movie.I must be alone on this, but I liked the film Crash (2004) very much; I understand why its message and its characters upset to some people, but I liked the performances, the tone and the ingenious way in which co-screenwriters Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco took the structure of "intercconected stories" to bring it a fresh and dynamic twist.I mentioned all that because Crossing Over is basically Crash, but without that energy and dynamism.Its didactic intention is irritating and all the characters are a living cliché.Maybe, Kramer should have left his movie untouchable, instead of submitting himself to the whims from a distributor.I do not know if Crossing Over would have been better with 40 additional minutes, but I consider Kramer to be a great director who made very solid work in the past and, because of that, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.The screenplay from this film has many important fails, since there are too many trembling and instructive conversations; sudden changes of attitude; stupid reactions; too many improbable coincidences; and finally, the narrative structure is badly distributed.Nevertheless, I cannot deny the performances from this film are very solid.Summer Bishil and Jacquline Obradors are perfect on their roles; Harrison Ford brings his best performance in many years; Ray Liotta brings good intensity to his role; and Ashley Judd is also credible.However, Crossing Over is a boring and uninteresting movie, which I would put on the same level of a melodramatic soap-opera.Nonetheless, I keep having faith on Kramer's future projects, since his previous work warrants a second chance..
Falling somewhere on the quality scale between the profound "Grand Canyon" on the one end and the dreadful "Crash" on the other, "Crossing Over" relates a half dozen or so interlocking tales centered around the issue of immigration.Harrison Ford is a compassionate INS agent who goes beyond the call of duty to help an undocumented single mother and her young son; Ashley Judd is an immigration defense attorney who wants to adopt a young African girl who's already spent 23 months in a detention center, the victim of a mountain of bureaucratic red tape; and Melody Khazae is a Muslim high school student whose seeming sympathy for the jihadist cause may make it impossible for her to remain in the country.
Alice Eve plays a wannabe actress from Australia who is willing to sell her body to Ray Liotta for a ticket to this country, while Jim Sturgess attempts to turn his con man role into a good guy because he can sing and smirk.Harrison Ford plays the agent with a heart, who takes much grief from his hardened co-agents as he attempts to save the world, one illegal at a time.
Now we get "Crossing Over" which just feels like Cramer watched Crash, Babel, and Traffic too many times in one afternoon and decided to try and make a film similar to those award-winning (and far superior) films, but ended up with an overly melodramatic film with boring stories.That's the initial feeling of this poorly constructed portrait of immigration life.
Much like Crash Crossing over is a collected of different characters and their stories about trying to get to America and the hassles of dealing with the officers and papers.
I couldn't get past the first 30 or 45 minutes of this movie.Between the constant "F-bombs" and the sleaze that Ray Liotta played it just disgusted me.I love Harrison Ford and I guess I just expected it to be a better movie.I also know that it wasn't his fault it turned out the way it did.The producer, the director, the script writer and maybe even the film editor are the biggest blame.It is dumb that these reviews have to be a minimum of 10 lines.
This is usually the problem with those movies that try to tell a story through the lives of multiple individuals.But the thing is, the film kind of just ended abruptly with still a lot to vouch for, a lot more details left unsaid, untouched.The film, like many others of its genre started off strong and showed heaps of potential on various occasions which just as quickly dissipated by the next scene.It was entertaining with the uniqueness of putting forward a fresh new idea to the audience which ended dismally as a gooey mess that didn't quite make itself out into anything.
Sure in the real life, the connections between all the characters and ethnicity would never happen, but the movie illustrates brilliantly why people want to cross border, how far they are ready to make it and how abusive the law is : At the end, i understand that borders come from State and that State turns against people : so it's like an human creation rebelling against its creators : humanity exists today because ancestors moved freely, humans don't give birth to papers but babies and deny this right of free travel is a crime against humanity : every human should have the right to live where he wants and migrant workers are not criminals !
It feels like a list.The interfacing connections are linked with two Immigration officers, played by Harrison Ford and Cliff Curtis; an adjudicator (Ray Liotta), and an immigration defence attorney (Ashley Judd).
The stories include a Mexican lady isolated from her kid in an attack; an Iranian family, entrenched, which is going to be naturalised; a Muslim youngster who draws in a FBI examination by perusing a blunt (yet honest to goodness) paper around 9/11 in class; a Korean adolescent (Justin Chon) who is being compelled to join a Korean posse; an Australian would-be performer; a sceptic Jew from Great Britain who acts like an educator whose nearness is required in a Hebrew school, and somewhat Nigerian vagrant who has been stranded in a holding focus and will be sent back to Africa and threat.
Some stories are more entertaining than others, but that was the same way with Crash.Harrison Ford is naturally the 'stand-out character' who the film is sold on and, as always, he plays his part of gruff immigration police officer to perfection.
also in the picture we have Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd, both who were very good, as our story progresses we see many different characters throughout the movie,, some get caught trying to cross over the border, and some make it,, Ray Liotta's character a bit shady he makes a deal with one of the pretty girls he busted, in order for her to get a green card,, she has to keep having sex with him.
It was all about the happenings in immigration offices, and followed several story lines, such as a girl who was the daughter of Bangladesh immigrants who presented a report in class on how you should look at the 9/11 terrorists as "human" and their motivations, and she wound up in trouble with the FBI;a social worker working with kids of prisoners;a crooked immigration worker who agrees to have sex with an Australian actress for two months so she can get her green card;an officer investigating crimes in Mexico;and a guy studying to be a rabbi.Overall, this wasn't too bad.
Like Haggis' film, Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over aims to present a wide image of the subject, and succeeds easily better than the heavy-handed Crash.The film features an ensemble cast with numerous characters whose lives intertwine with each other in various ways.
One of the most dramatic scenes deals with a South Korean teenager Yong (Justin Chon) who is being pressured into participating in a dangerous robbery by an Asian gang.As the story lines unwind, it becomes clear that illegal immigration to America is more diverse than it often seems; people from wealthy Western countries can also run into troubles while trying to obtain licenses or to become naturalized citizens.
While it is understandable that it is difficult to squeeze so many characters and story lines into a movie this short, I feel they really should have given at least a big-name actor like Harrison Ford a meatier role to play.The plot lines stay mostly down to earth, which emphasizes the realism of the characters.
It's also sort of an exploration of human nature, between those who are caring and empathetic to those in desperate circumstances, such as Harrison Ford's immigration officer and those who exploit them, such as sleazy Green Card Approval Officer Ray Liotta.The director's crazy, frenetic style has not completely gone away, and this sort of multi character plot line might not have been the best outlet for his approach to film, but this does not emerge as a failure.
The interconnected characters and plots will leave you to ask questions about the meaning of liberty and what America used to stand for.The movie depends on its all stellar cast led by Harrison Ford in his most unusual role ever, none of his typical saving-his-family from terrorists, in fact, his character in CROSSING OVER is a loner who wonders whether his job as ICE agent is the right thing to do, he's haunted by the implications and the impact of what he does for a living on those who just want to come here for a better life and angered by those who take advantage of the freedom bestowed upon them.
After 9/11 happened, the rules of the game have changed and Ford, in a way, is like that aching voice bugging us to rethink whether enforcing homeland security at the expense of a few good immigrants can be justified.All the rest of the supporting actors are outstanding in their performances, Jim Sturgess plays a guy who sticks to his principles to get a green card while his girlfriend is willing to sell her body for it.
CROSSING OVER (2009) **1/2 Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Jim Sturgess, Cliff Curtis, Summer Bishil, Alice Braga , Alice Eve. A mix of "Babel" and "Crash" in the culture clash study of immigration in the US with a decent ensemble with some nice work by Ford as an aging fed who tries to find the humanity in his soul-crushing work; Curtis as his partner who has a memorable speech in a convenience store hold-up; and especially Bishil as an opinionated student whose speech at school land her in hot water.
The intersecting tale of various immigrants (both legal and illegal) in and around Los Angeles is another attempt at a Crash like film about the worries of the world, in this case the plight of those coming here for a better life.
Anyone who has seen the movie,Crash will likely appreciate this film that is a multi-stranded and a heavy handed film that explores the issues surrounding immigration and US citizenship with the involvement of many characters.Unfortunately unlike the said film,Crossing Over lacks subtlety since many of the events seemed contrived and superficial.But nevertheless,we are treated with great performances particularly that of Harrison Ford.Also,it remains a thought-provoking film..