Crossing Over (2009) Critic Reviews

Tied together with endless, flattening shots of L.A.’s cloverleaf freeways, Crossing Over is often simplistic and occasionally lugubrious, but it's rarely boring.Read the full review

Crossing Over is so eager to go for the emotional jugular that it never quite forges an enlightening point of view.Read the full review

Some of these stories are fascinating and some are heartbreaking, but together they seem too contrived.Read the full review

Kramer takes on a hot, unwieldy topic in Crossing Over -- the dream that immigrants have of U.S. citizenship and the nightmare of achieving it, especially with shortcuts. I'm sure Kramer will be picked to pieces for trying something while Hollywood crap climbs the box office ladder. There are all kinds of nightmares.Read the full review

Enough things in Crossing Over work to keep the film from becoming a bore, but this is a definite step down from Kramer's past efforts, "The Cooler" and "Running Scared."Read the full review

There is undoubtedly a good movie in the varied experiences of American newcomers. But it would need to involve sagas more urgent and more original.Read the full review

If Crossing Over is less self-congratulatory than "Crash" about confronting its designated problem, it's just as inept at dramatizing the complex ways that problem unites and divides us. Here every cause is something you can wear around your neck.Read the full review

If Mr. Kramer's outrage felt honest, his film would be easier to respect. But time and again, he undermines his own righteousness by pumping up the violence and stripping down his talent.Read the full review

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.Read the full review