'Crossing': Over the Top

Message Movie Is Tripped by Its Excesses -- and Earnestness

"Crossing Over" is the kind of movie that gives Hollywood liberalism not a bad name, nor a good name, but an irritating, self-righteous and ultimately fatuous name.

The multilinear story involving illegal immigrants clearly takes its structural cue from such similarly tangled roundelays as "Crash" and "Babel." But the cinematic comparisons don't end there. As "Crossing Over" makes its patronizing points, by way of two-dimensional characters and billboarded plot points, it recalls other, better movies that dealt with the same subjects far more deftly. This will come as a particular surprise to fans of director Wayne Kramer's Las Vegas thriller "The Cooler," which was one of the most understated and subtle surprises of 2003.

Harrison Ford does his level, gruffly sardonic best playing Max Brogan, a Los Angeles Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent under whose scarred exterior beats a bleeding heart of gold. ("This man is having a [expletive] heart attack!" he bellows on behalf of one of his charges at one point. "I want him seen to!") When he arrests an illegal garment worker, she begs him to take care of her young son, an encounter that sends him on a journey of -- what else? -- personal redemption.

Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd and Jim Sturgess also appear, as an immigration official, a lawyer and a musician on the prowl for a green card, respectively. In supporting roles, the terrific New Zealand-born actor Cliff Curtis plays Brogan's fiery Iranian American partner; Summer Bishil ("Towelhead") portrays a 15-year-old Muslim girl whose naivete leads to preposterous ends; and Alice Eve, who looks like a digitally morphed combination of Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman, plays an actress who wants to be the next Naomi Watts or Nicole Kidman.

But wait, there's more! We haven't even gotten to the Korean kid being tempted by gangbangers. Indeed, there's always more in "Crossing Over," whose characters, story lines, plot twists and polemical talking points are way too numerous -- and tiresome, and predictable -- to mention. Through it all, Ford and Judd manage best to overcome the script, with Ford retaining his craggy dignity and Judd ever-radiant despite dialogue so stilted you can hear the keystrokes behind every word.

It takes a particular kind of warped skill to make a movie that's simultaneously didactic and exploitative, but Kramer manages to thread just that unfortunate needle, alternating windy speeches about the American dream with lurid scenes of sex and violence.

The themes of tradition, assimilation, post-9/11 paranoia, random acts of bureaucratic injustice and intercultural tension have been adroitly portrayed in such recent releases as "Under the Same Moon," "Persepolis," "The Visitor" and "Gran Torino," to name just a few. Each of those films tapped into the timeless, universal themes Kramer seems unable to wrap his arms around. Maybe if he had kept "Crossing Over" simpler, he would have made a less simplistic movie.

Crossing Over (113 minutes, at AMC Hoffman, AMC Georgetown and Landmark's Bethesda Row) is rated R for pervasive profanity, strong violence, sexuality and nudity.