Crossing Over

Director: Wayne Kramer Wayne Kramer

Overview

Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, and Ashley Judd star in Running Scared writer/director Wayne Kramer's harrowing look at life amongst illegal immigrants and the immigration enforcement agents whose job it is to ensure that the U.S. borders remain secure. Every day, a new batch of immigrants comes flooding into Los Angeles in search of the American dream -- and every day the price of that dream rises exponentially. As the desperation of these newcomers continually tests the humanity of Los Angeles immigration enforcement officers, the face of a 21st century L.A. gradually begins to take form.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/09/2009
UPC:	0796019820264
Original Release:	2009
Rating:	R
Source:	Weinstein Company
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Letterbox]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:53:00
Sales rank:	29,592

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Harrison Ford	Max Brogan
Ashley Judd	Denise Frankel
Ray Liotta	Cole Frankel
Sean Penn	Chris Farrell
Summer Bishil	Taslima Jahang
Merik Tadros	Farid Baraheri
Cliff Curtis	Hamid Baraheri
Alice Eve	Claire Shepard
Justin Chon	Yong Kim
Michael Esparza	Ray
Jim Sturgess	Gavin Kossef
Alice Braga	Mireya Sanchez
Jacqueline Obradors	Actor
Melody Khazae	Zahra Baraheri
Tammin Sursok	Actor
Terence Hines	Actor
Lizzy Caplan	Marla
Mark Isham	Composer

Technical Credits

Wayne Kramer

Wayne Kramer	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Frank Marshall	Producer
Bob Weinstein	Executive Producer,Executive Producer,Producer,Producer
Michael Beugg	Producer,Executive Producer
Anne McCarthy	Casting
Jay Scully	Casting

Editorial Reviews

Crossing Over successfully follows the template established by Traffic, Babel, Crash, and Fast Food Nation for sociopolitical drama across multiple demographics. But you wouldn't know it from the film's box-office performance. It couldn't clear a half-million dollars domestically, a strange outcome indeed for a movie featuring one of the most bankable stars of the last three decades in Harrison Ford. Writer-director Wayne Kramer deserved a larger audience for his timely examination of the harsh realities of U.S. immigration law, which represents a personal graduation from stylish genre films (The Cooler, Running Scared) to more prestigious, serious subject matter. Crossing Over isn't always subtle, and perhaps the prospect of all that feel-bad moralizing turned some viewers away. But the film does engagingly present an array of topical issues, starting with the political hot potato at the Mexican border, and expanding outward to others we rarely hear about. Kramer also offers up a teenage girl threatened with deportation for her rhetorical stance in a school project, a Korean gangbanger who may be killed before he's naturalized, and even an Australian actress attempting to overstay her work visa. There's some level of melodrama in the way these case studies play out, but they make a useful snapshot of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses America once welcomed without hesitation. Kramer finds the shades of gray in his talented cast, particularly Cliff Curtis as an Iranian-born INS agent, Ray Liotta as a sleazy immigration officer, Alice Eve as the Australian ingenue, and Summer Bishil as the Bangladeshi teen whose schoolwork flags her as an Islamic extremist. Only the unremittingly glum Ford isn't very nuanced, but that works well as a conscious choice for his character, who's spiritually broken by a lifetime of raiding workplaces and crushing dreams.