Last month, my mother called me out of the blue telling me she had just finished watching this movie about immigration and wanted me to include this movie in my next set of movies I rent from Blockbuster. After watching this movie, I see why my mother told about this excellent film.

Crossing Over is a collection of inter-related stories about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to navigate through the complicated immigration system to achieve legal status. Writer-director Wayne Kramer, The Cooler and Running Scared, masterfully interweaves the different sides of this complicated issue to present an intricate overview of the challenges and choices people make so they can remain in the United States.

Max Brogan (Harrison Ford), veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, is conflicted with the moral and ethical ramifications of his job. Sympathetic to the plight to the people he is required to detain, Brogan is not afraid to be their advocate in an environment hostile towards immigrants. As Mireya Sanchez (Alice Braga) captured during one of ICE’s immigration raid, Mireya pleads with Max to check up on her young son, left in the care of a ruthless neighbor. Max refuses to help her to prove to his co-workers he is not gone “soft.” However, his conscience gets the better of him and decides to take the boy back to his grandparents in Mexico, only to find the mother is missing.

After finding out Claire Shepard (Alice Eve), an aspiring Australian actress, is filing an extension for her visitor’s visa, Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta), an immigration adjudicator with the power to derail her life, requests that she meet with him in private to discuss her “options.” Shepard reluctantly agrees, only to find herself at his mercy. Frankel blackmails her by spelling out the scenario for what would happen to her if she didn’t sleep with him, “some mama Latina would make you her bitch in lockup.” After sleeping with her, he makes a proposition to help her secure immigration papers in exchange for two months of unlimited sex as his sex slave.

Gavin Kossef (Jim Sturgess) is a young South African immigrant trying to break into the indie-rock scene. Through the help of his manager, Kossef is hired a Hebrew school, which makes him eligible to apply for a visa as a religious worker. The process for completing a religious worker visa, he must demonstrate his familiarity with the Jewish religion. Kossef is ethnically Jewish, however, there is a small problem, he happens to be an atheist.

Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis), Max Brogan’s partner, is a naturalized Iranian-American who struggles with assimilation – to uphold his cultural values and traditions while living in the United States. His cultural value comes into question when tensions between his sister, Zahra, and his family. Zahra is born in the US and has embraced many of America’s values. Hamid and his family disapprove with Zahra’s lifestyle and her with her Latino boss, who happens to be married and has kids. Hamid’s father, who is on the brink of naturalization, encourages his brother to “teach them a lesson,” but he ends up killing them. When Hamid finds out, his life is irrevocably altered.

Denise Frankel (Ashley Judd), is a compassionate immigration attorney and is taken by an African orphan, Alike, who is locked at an immigration detention center. Alike has been in at the detention center for 23 months awaiting sponsorship because her is in a hospice dying of AIDS and her father back in Nigeria denies her. We learn Denise is Cole Frankel’s wife. The two have been trying to have a baby for sometime. After several unsuccessful tries, Denise is interested in adopting Alike, however, Cole is not interested.

Saving the best for last. Taslima Jahangir (Summer Bishil) is a 15 year old Bengali girl who is turned into the FBI by her own school principal for writing an essay about the reasons for jihad. She explained that despite what the 9/11 hijackers did was downright unforgivable; they died for what they believed in. As we may view our soldiers as heroes, they are calling our soldiers terrorists. The essay brought the wrath of the FBI to her and her family. Her world was suddenly turned upside down when ICE discovered her family are undocumented. ICE offers Taslima’s parents one of the most heartbreaking choices an immigrant parent would have to make. Since Taslima’s two younger siblings are US citizens, ICE was willing to allow only one parent to stay, while the other would voluntary deports with Taslima. They would have to choose which parent would stay behind. Even more heartbreaking, after Taslima’s mother decided she would be the one who would leave with Taslima, ICE did not give Taslima a chance to say goodbye to her father.

If you never heard of the film, you probably never will. The film critics picked apart the film, calling it “simplistic,” sanctimonious, self-righteousness film. So critics even expounded bordered on anti-immigration rhetoric.

Each year in the United States, several hundred thousand non-citizens are arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. Wayne Kramer, an immigrant from South Africa, did a great job stripping away the common black and white view on immigration, and challenges the viewers to see the different shades of gray. Not only does he address American immigration experience, but he invites the viewers to examine more closely the impact our current immigration system has on us as a society and the tragedies many immigrants face.

Being an immigrant advocate, this film really resonated with me because each storyline reminded of an incident I either read or written on this blog. I guess I take issue with the bad reviews because it was viewed through a myopic anti-immigrant and post 9-11 paranoia lens. It also didn’t help theatrical cut left out an important story from the original version.

This film certainly receives the XicanoPwr vote of approval. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

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