This week’s eerie episode of “been here, seen this” continues with “Crossing Over,” Wayne Kramer’s tale of lives connecting and colliding in present-day Los Angeles.
A fender-bender even figures into this overly entwined narrative, making it that much harder to avoid “Crash” comparisons.
“Crossing Over” is more forced than that award-winning mosaic. Still, what Kramer sacrifices in subtlety, his ensemble begins to make up for with their involving portrayals of people ground down by institutions.
Harrison Ford heads the cast as Max Grogan. The aging ICE agent and his partner, first-generation Iranian Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis), descend on a sweatshop factory, rousting the undocumented.
One of them pleads for Grogan to find the young son she’s left with a sitter. It’s clear from the barbs of colleagues and Grogan’s own heavy grimace that he’s exhausted by the duty of not caring. So he cares.
The yearning to be free — or at least documented — provides myriad opportunities for indifferent or brutal treatment.
Ray Liotta plays Cole Frankel. Ashley Judd is wife Denise, an immigration-rights lawyer. It’s an ugly kismet when Cole hits a car driven by Aussie acting hopeful Claire (Alice Eve). She’s teetering on being in the U.S. illegally. He’s a green-card adjudicator. Welcome to the new casting couch.
Claire’s U.K. boyfriend (Jim Sturgess) is trying to scam his own visa, playing the religion card at a Jewish school. Hamid’s family is celebrating his father’s impending citizenship even as they scorn his younger sister with old-world vigor.
You see, it’s all a bit too interlocking, a cable series jammed into a couple of hours.
Often the movie is vexingly Kafkaesque. (It is also violent.)
One story line is particularly overpushy. Taslima, a bright Bangladeshi teen, riles her classmates and rouses the attention of the FBI with an essay on the 9/11 terrorists.
The hell she brings down upon her sweet family, while believable, will nearly cast viewers out of the film and into a funk about being manipulated.
“Crossing Over”
Written and directed by Wayne Kramer; photography by James Whitaker; starring Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, Cliff Curtis, Alice Braga, Alice Eve. Opens today at the Regency Theatres at Tamarac Square.
