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Capone Lost of Piece of His Soul Watching CROSSING OVER so You Don't Have To!!!
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I was not a CRASH hater; I don't think it deserved to win the Best Picture Oscar a couple years back, but I was a supporter of the film that featured intersecting storylines to illustrate the fractured state of race and human relations in the world. I even went back a second time to watch it just to try and understand why those who despised it did so with such fervor. I never quite figured that part out. Cut from the same cloth (at least in theory) is the long-delayed CROSSING OVER. (Side note: have you noticed that just about every film from The Weinstein Company these days can be preceded by the phrase "long-delayed"?) The biggest difference between CRASH and CROSSING OVER is that the latter film takes a great idea and compelling structure--exposing the current state of immigration and earned citizenship in America with several stories about different types of legal and illegal immigrants--and then forgets even some of the most basic fundamentals of filmed storytelling, like credible acting, editing that makes sense, believable scenarios, and not feeling like the film's message needs to be broadcast from a megaphone atop the tallest building in the land.
I was a huge fan of writer-director Wayne Kramer's earlier film, THE COOLER, which was a mostly quiet character study. His last film, RUNNING SCARED, was just insane enough to be entertaining. When I heard about the concept of this film, I got excited because I'd anticipated a collection of fine-tuned personal stories, much like THE COOLER, but that he might also show the often-seedy side of coming into this country illegally. We get little touches of both sides of Kramer, and as a result, neither makes much of an impact. The film feels like watered-down, movie-of-the-week garbage. Nearly all of the performances in CROSSING OVER seem to hit the wrong note, as if Kramer was afraid to tell actors like Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta and Sean Penn (whose part has been completely edited out at Penn's request) how to reign in their emoting. As a result, everyone is hitting different notes from one scene to the next, and often one actor is hyped up while another in the same scene is attempting to underplay the moment. You may think this won't mean that much to the untrained eye, but trust me, it's infuriating.
I did like a few of the actors playing the immigrants caught up in political red tape and post-9/11 paranoia (a well-earned paranoia, I might add). In a weird way, I would have rather watched these stories as separate movies than have them all crammed together like this. The sleazy tale of an Australian actress (the ravishing Alice Eve) who gets cast in a big American TV show only to realize her work Visa is about to expire might have made for an interesting stand-alone movie. She gets involved in a bizarre sex-for-papers relationship with the very immigration applications adjuster (Liotta) who can push her extension application through, but he begins to fall in love with her. In its current state, the segment feels like a freak show and exploitation, especially since Eve plays many of her scenes naked. I know I shouldn't be complaining, but you want it to feel fun at least.
The story of a young Korean teen (Justin Chon) who is torn between his soon-to-be-naturalized family life and the Korean gangs reminded me of elements of GRAN TORINO, but an explosive climax to that story crosses into parody and undercuts what is otherwise a collection of nice performances in that plot. I also liked the story of a teenage girl from Bangladesh (Summer Bishil from TOWELHEAD), who reads an incendiary essay in class that results in Homeland Security taking an interest in her and her habits. Again, this might have made a great stand-alone film, but as it is, it feels rushed, underwritten, and ends with a breakdown scene that may be a new benchmark in snot-filled crying for a drama.
The biggest surprise about CROSSING OVER is how the name-above-the-title actors let us down. They're either sleepwalking through their roles (as Ford does, playing a immigration agent who is losing his taste for deporting people) or they emote so that those in the third balcony can feel it (Judd's immigration defense lawyer character is incredibly self-righteous, and Cliff Curtis as Ford's partner is just ridiculous). In a film that should have been about compassion, struggle, family and what it means to be an American, CROSSING OVER spends its running time calling attention to how noble it's being. The end result is a film that skims the surface of the immigration issue. Watch last year's The Visitor to see how uncompromising and moving a story on this topic can be. THE VISITOR remembers that these people aren't nameless, faceless statistics, whereas CROSSING OVER reveals itself to be nothing more than a heavy-handed, wretched message movie.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
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this looked like it was gonna be.
Harrison just needs to off himself. He's useless these days. -
Seriously.
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Watch THE VISITOR instead.
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You can come crash at my place till all this hate cools down. How can you not love the dude who played Han Solo, Indy Jones, and Rick Deckard?
I fucking hate people. -
because just like you said this movie does, Crash forgot some basic fundamentals of filmmaking including a couple you referenced here, "believable scenarios and not feeling like the films message needs to broadcast from a megaphone atop the tallest building in the land." Those were by far my biggest problems with Crash and it seems like they are repeated here.
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And that really, he's the best thing about this film.
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just re-emerges between bouts of shit to make an occasional Indiana Jones movie. I feel bad for the guy because I think he's a pretty talented actor, but he chooses the worst movies to act in.
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Seriously. They are. They're self absorbed jerks who try above all else to have the last laugh. They meddle with directors, fuck their movies up, and if they get really pissed off, they give you the middle finger and dump your movie, like "Crossing Over," like "Fanboys," and like so many other films. "Crossing Over" had a hellish post-production. Sean Penn wanted his scenes cut out, the Weinsteins kept fucking with the movie, Kramer had to do various cuts, Frank Marshall did a cut, the Weinsteins did several more, hell, even Harrison Ford had his own cut of the movie. So yeah, amazing what was put up on screen ended up being somewhat watchable.
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Is the one I saw in 2007. It was a very good movie. I have no idea about this one, but Harrison Ford is not sleepwalking in this. Not at all. Guess it's popular to claim that people are 'phoning it in', or something.
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lame.
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Yeah I know there are many to choose from, but the scene where the guy's daughter gets' "shot" and it gets all slow mo and strobey is maybe some of the worst camera work I've seen in any film this side of Bride of the Monster.
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Mar 13, 2009 3:38:03 PM CDT
I'm still looking forward to seeing what Wayne Kramer has done
by the_genteel_gentile
The Cooler was quite good and Running Scared is a vastly underrated jewel. If you have not seen Running Scared but dug Trainspotting, Pulp Fiction, U-Turn, Punch Drunk Love, Watchmen, Coraline or anything else off the beaten path, do not hesitate to rent it. The movie is mad and twisted and great. It's the flick Crank wishes it could be. Give it a go and you will find something in yourself you never knew you had, a quantum of respect for Paul Walker. It's true, scout's honor.
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Mar 13, 2009 3:49:48 PM CDT
Running Scared is kind of wickedly subversive fantasia
by the_genteel_gentile
Hudson Hawk was trying to be. Also if you enjoyed movies like Very Bad Things or Go, Running Scared is for you.
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don't see how it is like Very Bad Things or Go though. And Harrison Ford haters can go fall off the Earth.
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The man truly HAS lost his frigging mind.
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Mar 13, 2009 4:09:29 PM CDT
TheMcflyFarm - It just has a similar dark frenetic vibe
by the_genteel_gentile
don't you think?
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Mar 13, 2009 4:59:22 PM CDT
Sad to think that whenever i now see Ford's name...
by christian_bale_trashed_my_lights
..in the credits of a movie, i make a mental note to avoid it. I try to imagine that the real Harrison Ford died sometime after What Lies Beneath.
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"the most basic fundamentals of filmed storytelling, like credible acting, editing that makes sense, believable scenarios, and not feeling like the film's message needs to be broadcast from a megaphone atop the tallest building in the land."...THAT'S exactly what was missing from Crash, and exactly why I hated Crash with a passion.Kenneth Turan (hit or miss critic for me, but he's right on in this case) noted its biggest flaw and why it had a target painted on it for many discerning filmgoers:"[...] the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.
For “Crash’s” biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed."Amen, brother! we don't need bald, white Scientologist hacks to show us racism is complicated. show us something new, or else don't bother making your manipulative and unrealistic movie.
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You two aren't worthy of smelling Harrison Ford's shit.
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i dont even know why i saw that in the theater, i'm no Paul Walker fan. i guess there wasn't anything else out at the time. glad i saw it though. A fucked up real world Alice in Wonderland.
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lifeless, hokie, message movies with no heart. just mix a bunch of half-assed stories that can't stand on their own together, and thats what you get. 2 very overrated movies. Pure Melodrama. I hate melodramas.
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...even though he sucks now.
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even when I didn't bother looking at the writer and director beforehand, I could tell it was done by one guy. No movie with a left-field Ozzie and Harriet pedophile kill-chamber is a work by committee, that's for sure.
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