Crossing Over (2009) Movie Review

Crossing Over is a movie about a few different nationalities struggling to get legal status in the United States.

Max Brogan (Harrison Ford) is an Immigration Officer who routinely raids factories looking for illegal workers while secretly hiding compassion for some of his illegal detainees such as a single mum (Alice Braga) who was deported after the raid while no one except Max knew that her son stayed behind.

His partner’s story is: American born Iranian (Cliff Curtis) whose father is going through the naturalisation process. In that story line his sister (also American born) rebels against their Muslim values and the way of life, enjoys her life to the max and as such “brings shame to the family” and ends up being killed by one of her brothers. Max Brogan decides to investigate this murder and find the killer – one would think that immigration officers don’t investigate murders???

There is also a pretty Australian model (Alice Eve) who struggles to get her visitor’s visa extended and ends up meeting a guy who works as a green card officer (Ray Liotta) who promises her green card in return for some “adult loving”.

Coincidently Ray Liotta’s wife in this movie works as a defense lawyer basically defending the rights of those immigrants and ends up being involved in a case where a 15 year old girl is accused of having ties with terrorists, jihad etc and ends up being deported without a due process.

A Jewish Folk Singer (Jim Sturgess) is also trying to con the system by proclaiming his devotion to Judaism even though he knows nothing about it. Not too sure what his story line has to do with this movie.

One of the weirdest scenes is a bloody convenience store robbery story where Cliff Curtis kills 4 gangsters (all Asian) and decides to let one of them go after hearing his story at the end of his 9mil gun.  Here the story writer tries to show some of the elements of American tolerance and forgiveness… God help us all!!!

Crossing Over – not too sure how I feel about this movie, it’s needlessly overcomplicated with different plots popping out throughout the movie and Harrison Ford’s role although simple there is nothing to suggest why he is living alone, helps immigrants, watches animal channels and drinks whiskey all by himself in his apartment (lol).

Part of me feels like a 60min documentary aired on Discovery Channel with this story line would be more interesting than this movie.

Would I recommend Crossing Over the movie? Yes, but only if you have nothing else to do.

Movie review by: Nenad Rajsic