Touching their lives in one way or another are a series of immigrants, some here lawfully, most of them not, all looking for a better life. Through it all Brogan tries to maintain balance between his professional duty along with a growing sense of moral outrage. But when a tragic murder hits too close to home the veteran detective starts to reevaluate his priorities, the hypocrisy ripping so many lives apart now touching his own in ways that shock him to the core.

The main problem with writer-director Wayne Kramer’s Crossing Over is that it feels unfinished. Another topical drama like Crash, Traffic and Babel where multiple storylines are connected by circumstance and coincidence, this one never came together like I hoped it would. Its meandering threads don’t have the intensity or the emotion required to resonate, a talented cast of veteran character actors giving their all even when the material refuses to rise up and match them.

There is the possibility that the reasons for these missteps are not entirely the filmmaker’s. The film has had a massively protracted post-production. Sean Penn supposedly made it clear to executive producer Harvey Weinstein that he no longer wanted his scenes included due to one of the religiously-fueled subplots (a fact he apparently missed when he read the script). Not only did he get his wish, if reports are to be believed notoriously hands-on Harvey also forced Kramer to edit his sprawling epic to a length under two hours, many of the meaty moments fleshing out some of the characters and their travails apparently left on the cutting room floor.

If that is true than let me just say it is a massive shame because when Crossing Over works it does so magnificently. Ford (his finest work in ages) comes off the best, but considering he’s the one that connects it all together that’s not exactly a surprise. For me, even better is a thread concerning a young Australian actress (beautifully played by relative newcomer Alice Eve) doing everything she can think of to get a Green Card, including suffering the indignity of becoming a bedraggled immigration officer’s (a typecast Ray Liotta) sad-eyed paramour.

In all fairness none of the remaining tangents are horrible; they just don’t have enough flesh on their bones. A bit with talented Towelhead star Summer Bishil dealing with the FBI after her High School 9/11 essay has unseen consequences is shocking, yes, but without more in-depth examination it can’t help but come across as a little melodramatically exploitive. Attached to this is Ashley Judd playing Liotta’s dogged immigration defense attorney wife, and while having her back onscreen is definitely a delight I just wish the role she was playing was less of a convenient one-dimensional plot device.

Coming off better is Across the Universe heartthrob Jim Sturgess. He plays an atheist British rocker who takes a job at a Jewish elementary school as a music teacher in order to gain permanent residency status, but as charming and wonderful as he is the whole subplot is a bit silly. Throw in an entire section with an Asian family and some immigrant street gangs, a fundamentalist father driving his sons to violence and a harried Mexican mother trying to get back to her adolescent son after she’s been deported there’s a ton of story here, there’s just not enough time to tell it all in.

If you’re noticing a theme, that’s completely on purpose. Time is Kramer’s biggest enemy, and even though vignettes knocked my socks off on the whole the film frustratingly left me cold. None of these nebulous tangents come together in a way that’s satisfactory, and by the time the coincidence started piling one upon the other (as they often do in pictures structured like this one) culminating in a scene staged at a nationalism ceremony I was really rather over it all.

Anyone who has seen either The Cooler or Running Scared knows Kramer is one seriously talented filmmaker, and while those skills are still evident they just don’t rise to the standard set in those previous efforts. Crossing Over is disjointed, haphazard and infuriatingly disconnected, and whether it be the fault of the producer or a fault of the script this intriguing and topical drama is still nothing more than a disappointment sure to be deported from theater screens and shuffled off to DVD before you even know it.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

• Crossing Over Theatrical Trailer