CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 2/27/09

Beyond Borders

By shyla coen

The lives of several Los Angeles citizens—some in the country illegally—intersect in an ensemble drama that takes a look at the hot-button issue of immigration.

Crossing Over

Wayne Kramer (also directed)

Writer-director Wayne Kramer will never been known for his subtlety. His debut feature, The Cooler, marked the arrival of a fresh, uninhibited filmmaker telling a story about characters as bombastic and gaudy as its Las Vegas casino setting. He followed that with the loud, brutal, and very entertaining Running Scared, which wore its scenes of graphic sex and violence proudly on its sleeve. Now, with Crossing Over, Kramer turns his eye on the timely issue of immigration, telling the tales of a mosaic of characters trying to obtain the American dream. While his multi-layered storytelling will inevitably earn comparisons to films such as Traffic and Crash, Crossing Over ultimately lacks the power of those films, done in by its own predictability.

The main story focuses on world-weary Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Max Brogan (Harrison Ford) trying to locate a single mother (Alice Braga), whose pleas to care for her young son went ignored during a bust. Brogan also becomes wrapped up in the family drama of his partner, Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis), whose conservative Iranian family disapproves of his rebellious sister's affair with a married man. Also on the immigrant side is 15-year-old Bangladeshi Taslima (Summer Bishil), whose school essay warrants FBI attention, a British musician named Gavin (Jim Sturgess), and his opportunistic Australian girlfriend, Claire (Alice Eve). Lured by the promise of a green card, Claire enters into a sexual relationship with an immigration applications adjudicator named Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta). Cole's wife, Denise (Ashley Judd), just happens to be the immigration attorney who represents Taslima, among others.

The main flaw in Kramer's script is that the plight of these immigrants—however real—feels polemic. Those who work to enforce immigration are painted in broad strokes as incompetents who lose applications, or opportunists like Cole. Though Brogan is a sympathetic character, it's made clear from Ford's anguished grimaces that he loathes his job. And his fellow ICE agents are generally portrayed as crass and uncaring. A reason for requiring standards in immigration is never given, which makes those who work to enforce the laws come off as cardboard villains.

As for the immigrants, it's pretty easy to guess each one's fate as their stories unfold; the plots are all fairly predictable. It's not helped by some bombastic writing that sounds more like speechifying. These include the scene where Taslima reads her essay in which she defends the 9-11 hijackers; Bishil, so subtle and excellent in last year's Towelhead, is written way over the top here, spitting out lines of dialogue about how the terrorists' voices were finally heard. Even worse is a scene in which Hamid holds a criminal at gunpoint as sirens approach, lecturing a Korean youth about not taking the American dream for granted. It's not just implausible, it's insulting to the audience's intelligence.

These missteps are unfortunate, because Kramer has assembled a mostly terrific cast who do their best with the material, specifically Ford, who hasn't been this good in years. (It helps that the role of Brogan plays to his strengths as the strong but silent heroic type.) Kramer also has a good ear for dialogue when he's not working so hard to make a point. There's an wonderful conversation between Brogan and Hamid's outcast sister that feels unforced and natural, and even manages to provide some humor when the cop jokes he's "never been invited to a shunning before." Another subtle point is made when Brogan is asked his daughter's age and says "twenty-six" before correcting himself to "twenty-seven?" Such simple moments say far more about his character than pages of rhetoric ever could.

Crossing Over
The Weinstein Co.
Rated R; 113 min.

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Shyla Coen is an L.A.-based writer, director, and gadabout.



Crossing Over courtesy The Weinstein Co.

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