Crossing Over (Weinstein/Genius DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: D Film: C
Director
Wayne Kramer has a directing career that is reeling from excess. Once so promising with The Cooler (2003, reviewed elsewhere on this site), he then made the
awful Running Scared (2006) which
remains one of the last and poorest attempts to be Pulp Fiction albeit very desperate and now, he tries to do his
answer to Crash (which itself is
several generations away from Robert Altman’s best work) in the immigration
drama Crossing Over (2009) which
tries to get many meanings out of its title.
Too bad Kramer’s script was not that ambitious.
Literally,
it is about people coming to the U.S., while symbolically, it is supposed to be
everyone understanding everyone else is human.
Unfortunately like Running Scared,
he takes on more than he should, starts so many things he cannot finish and
more than ever, you are left hanging here at the end not because of a lack of
closure, but because of a lack of vision.
Harrison Ford
is an INS officer with a conscious trying to make a difference, but the racism
(real and supposed in the script) paints a picture of almost every immigrant
being exploited in some way. As a matter
of fact, though I am certain some of what is show goes on all the time, it
happens so often here that it almost becomes a spoof of itself. To say this is against anti-immigrant trends
is an understatement, but it is not just a politically correct film, it is a
very sappy PC flick complete with a score by Mark Isham that has so many
strings, you could do a year’s worth of international tennis touring with them.
Ford,
Ashley Judd, Alice Braga and Ray Liotta as yet another bad guy (yawn. Plus, he just did another such film with Powder Blue, though not as a bad person
for a change) are good and the cast all around give good performances, but they
are all trapped in a Kramer’s sloppy mess.
The film was originally longer and a character was even dropped, but I
can’t imagine that any additions would have improved what we see here, so be
very awake if you intend to sit through this one. Too bad, because this had potential if only
Kramer could have concentrated better.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is on the soft side, too stylized too
often in ways that degrade the image and also backfire on the film’s
credibility. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix
is not bad and has more of a soundfield than expected, but this is one of
Isham’s poorest scores. There are no
extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
