The Green Card of Doom

There are two types of Harrison Ford movies: the ones that
fall into the Oh-Sweet-Christ-This-Dude-Is-So-Fucking-Awesome category
(see Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back,
Blade Runner), and those that fall into the
This-Guy-Kind-of-Seems-Like-a-Pussyish-Loser-Nowadays-and-Eew-Isn’t-He-Schtupping-Ally-McBeal?
category (Six Days Seven Nights, Random Hearts,
Regarding Henry).

Guess which category Crossing Over falls under. I’ll give you
a hint: It’s a touchy-feely ensemble piece about the effects of US
immigration policy on an intertwined collection of racially diverse
families in present-day Los Angeles. It’s kinda like Crash,
except more of the characters cry.

Ford plays Max Brogan, an immigration officer who suffers a guilt
complex after he sends a particularly winsome factory worker back to
Mexico. His partner Hamid (Cliff Curtis) is an Iranian whose
conservative, traditional family has issues with Hamid’s rambunctious
younger sister.

Meanwhile, Ashley Judd plays a defense attorney who comes down with
a case of the Angelina Jolies after she meets a cute little African
girl in need of adoptive parents. Judd’s husband (Ray Liotta) is an
applications adjudicator who’s forcing an Australian actress, Claire
(Alice Eve, in one of the movie’s better performances), to sleep with
him to get her green card. And there are a million other characters of
a million other nationalities and races, and they all want a big, juicy
slice of American pie.

Crossing Over‘s script aims to be a tragic, epic sprawl, but
it feels shallow, and the film’s padded with endless aerial shots of
Los Angeles. Ford has one memorable scene when he slyly flirts with
Hamid’s sister, but the rest of the time, he’s a mumbling non-presence.
Crossing Over tries to make us feel bad about the unfair
difficulties of becoming a US citizen, and also to make us remember how
everybody in the world wants to become an American because, by golly,
we’re terrific! But if this movie is any indication, we’re actually
self-righteous, pompous bores.