Crossing Over
Running time 113 minutes
Written and directed by Wayne Kramer
Starring Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Alice Eve, Alice Braga, Cliff Curtis, Jim Sturgess, Summer Bishil

Crossing Over is another of those multilayered movies with myriad plots cross-cut editorially in ways that sometimes seem confusing until they intersect at odd angles to address a common underlying theme. Here, the theme is U.S. immigration, legal and otherwise, approached from several viewpoints on both sides of the law that unfold in fragmented episodes simultaneously. Tying unrelated short stories together under one unifying umbrella is an overworked conceit that includes everything from Robert Altman’s Nashville to such widely acclaimed films as 21 Grams, Babel and Crash. This jigsaw of the desperate and disenfranchised who try to cross over America’s borders in search of a better life lends urgency to the genre, but remains mostly an excuse to line up a diverse group of actors in the cinematic equivalent of a gym workout.

Writer-director Wayne Kramer threads the pieces together, making valid points about the tragedies and triumphs of the U.S. immigration agencies that tie up the lives of desperate people in a never-ending tangle of red tape. And he gets uniformly terrific performances from a fine cast playing pawns in the game of sex, violence and betrayal that diminishes the noble tradition of naturalized citizenship. Now that his blond, pumpkin-tinted hair from the last Indiana Jones movie has grown out gray and natural again, Harrison Ford makes a perfectly cast veteran cop with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Los Angeles, whose conscience makes him empathetic to the plight of a Mexican factory worker (Alice Braga) arrested with no papers or work permits and an underage child to support. While he risks his own job to rescue the little boy and personally drive him back to his grandparents in Mexico, another government customs officer who judges visa applications (Ray Liotta) abuses his power by promising a green card to a pretty Australian Nicole Kidman wannabe named Claire (Alice Eve) in exchange for sexual slavery. Her boyfriend Gavin, a British rock musician (Jim Sturgess), goes another route, faking Hebrew credentials to work as a rabbi and winning the sympathy of a real rabbi, who agrees to back him as a teacher. Other stories revolve around a bright, innocent Iranian schoolgirl turned into the F.B.I. task force on terrorism by her own school principal, and deported, for writing an essay about the reasons for jihad; a Korean teenager who robs a convenience store the night before his naturalization ceremony for U.S. citizenship; a hardworking defense attorney for illegal immigrants (Ashley Judd) who is the sexual predator’s wife; a murdered Iranian girl, who worked in a print shop that copies forged visas and work permits, who happens to be the sister of the naturalized L. A. cop (Cliff Curtis) who is Harrison Ford’s friend and partner on the force. As the Los Angeles Convention Center fills with proud, hopeful immigrants taking their oaths of allegiance to become American citizens, the movie juxtaposes the stories of some who made it and others who didn’t, interwoven with the stories of the people along the way with uniforms and badges who exploit, search and destroy them. And still they arrive daily—across rivers, under barbed-wire fences and huddled in the backs of trucks—looking for a better future in a country the rest of us take for granted. The words are still written on the Statue of Liberty: “Give Me your tired, your poor.” It forgets to add “As long as they can pay.”

rreed@observer.com

The one word—however made up it may be—we would have to use to describe the new film Crossing Over is Crash-tastic. Much like the 2004 film we have ridiculed over and over (and over) again, Crossing Over takes place in Los Angeles and features a giant ensemble cast tenuously linked together. But this time, instead of exploring racial tensions, we’ve got immigration issues. Also like Crash, there happen to be some very good performances and affecting scenes in the mix that get overshadowed by the screaming not-so-subliminal good intentions and manipulations that unfortunately come along as well. Is subtlety dead? Apparently so!

How to break it all down? Here goes. Harrison Ford—looking great and age-appropriately silver foxy—plays Max Brogan, an immigration officer who seems to have only a cat (yay!) to care for at home and who seems completely overdoing his job rounding up illegal residents. He arrests a beautiful young Mexican woman (Alice Braga), who begs him to look after her son, setting him on a difficult path between duty and compassion. Meanwhile, Max’s partner Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis) has a sister (Melody Khazae) currently being shunned by his family. She is sleeping with her boss, who is making a fake ID for a young Nicole Kidman–esque Australian actress (Alice Eve, whom we loved in Starter for 10), who is simultaneously flirting with the hot English atheist trying to pretend to have found his inner Jew (21’s Jim Sturgess) while she’s also getting blackmailed into sleeping with Ray Liotta—who has never ever been so wonderfully creepy—who is married to Ashley Judd, an immigration lawyer and … We could keep going and try to explain the links to the young Korean gang and the devout Muslim girl, but we’ve already confused ourselves, and needless to say, they are all connected. Sigh.

A couple of these story lines could have gotten dropped along the way, because we actually would have liked to have seen more of some others, particularly Mr. Ford’s; the one scene he had with Melody Khazae had as much sparkage as something out of Working Girl. We’re still not sure whether Ashley Judd was intentionally doing an Angelina Jolie impression, or whether some of the more blatant heart-tugging scenes were really necessary. Manipulations aside, this is a thorny and upsetting subject to deal with. (Here’s one question, though: Are we really supposed to believe that a blond English-speaking bombshell like Alice Eve could have just as tough a time getting a green card as a Mexican worker who sneaks over the border?) Still, writer-director Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) never gives the audience the chance to make their own conclusion, and instead hammers his point home so hard that even if you took a nap for part of the film, you’d still get it. O.K., so we cried a little bit … but that made us resent it more.

Crossing Over opens Friday at Regal E-Walk 42nd Street, Union Square and Lincoln Square Cinemas.

svilkomerson@observer.com

Here's an upcoming Hollywood project that is the very definition of "let's throw a bunch of crap at the wall and see if it sticks". Variety reports that Harrison Ford has signed onto the J.J. Abrams produced/Roger Michell directed Morning Glory, a romantic comedy about two feuding hosts on a morning television show who can't stand each other and the puckish news producer who tries to hold it all together. As of yet, Mr. Ford's female rival has not been cast, but Paramount is looking at Rachel McAdams to co-star as the producer. It isn't clear if the script by Aline Brosh McKenna (she of the witty The Devil Wears Prada and the incessant 27 Dresses) will center on Mr. Ford and his fellow co-anchor falling in love or a burgeoning relationship between Mr. Ford and Ms. McAdams. However considering Mr. Ford is 36 years Ms. McAdams' senior, we're hoping for the former scenario.

Phew! This already sounds like a total mess. The last thing J.J. Abrams has been able to handle properly is the romantic comedy; just look at his derisible former television show October Road (or do yourself a favor and don't). And while Mr. Michell (Notting Hill), Ms. McKenna and Ms. McAdams are clearly comfortable within the genre, they all seem to fit into different subcategories.

Then there's Harrison Ford. At the risk of blaspheme, we never thought Mr. Ford was a great actor. He was a great movie star, mostly because he was able to slide along on his irascible charm, making girls swoon and boys grin. Unfortunately, that charm has long disappeared. It would be easy to point to his grumpy and sullen performance in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the tipping point--Mr. Ford spent the entirety of that film looking like a child sitting in front of a giant plate of broccoli--but we'd argue that he hasn't been charming in nearly twenty years. Spells of tight and unhappy performances litter his resume, from Sabrina to Hollywood Homicide to Firewall (truly one of the worst movies ever produced). At this point in his career, Mr. Ford is totally wrong for a romantic comedy, a genre that lives and dies on the charm of its actors. Barring Meryl Streep being cast as his co-anchor (which, face it, would be awesome), we think this project is doomed to fail under the weight of his frowning visage before it even gets off the ground.

Agyness Deyn has been acting in a film currently being shot on Long Island and written and directed by her band-mate, 19-year-old Alanna Masterson, Danny Masterson's sister. [The Cut]

Ms. Deyn has also finally found her home in Williamsburg, where she will likely have a less famous face. [P6]

A real Upper East Side Gossip Girl, Miss ITK (In The Know), terrorizes Dalton students; writes, "My dear butterflies, all that's good, bad and scandalous in the lives of 2012's socially elite." [Daily Intel]

Tom Wolfe says that Chris Tennant's new book, The Official Flthy Rich Handbook, "is like eating 12 baked Alaskas in a row." Which is a good thing, right? [P6]

Slow news day: Harrison Ford split his pants in Cannes. [NY Daily News]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Running Time 124 minutes
Written by David Koepp
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf

As summer time-wasters go, the latest Indiana Jones will go in record time, if you ask me. Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first chapter in the series since 1989, is a four-star yawn. Harrison Ford started this fairy-tale franchise 27 years ago. At 65, he looks pretty darn trim, but why doesn’t he stop dyeing his hair? Sometimes it’s a rugged, manly silver. In the next scene it looks like he’s wearing a champagne rinse from Elizabeth Arden. Finally it turns orange as a Sunkist popsicle. Whatever else we expect from Indiana Jones, we don’t want him to look like Lucille Ball.

The movie itself makes no sense, but what escapist summer movie does? It’s now 1957 in a secret military base in either Nevada or New Mexico (the movie is not too clear on the subject of details), closed for atomic weapons testing. An Air Force hangar is captured by Communist agents, led by Cate Blanchett as Stalin’s favorite Russian scientist in Buster Brown bangs. Out of a trunk in a deserted warehouse comes Indy, who stages a noisy, knuckle-cracking fight that sets off a nuclear reactor and blows up everything except his trademark brown fedora. It’s one close call too many, so Indy retires from cracking whips and battling pits of hissing cobras, and goes to work as a college professor teaching a course in archaeology. Now called Colonel Jones by the dean (Jim Broadbent), he learns that his recent activities exterminating Russians have led the U.S. government to suspect him of treason (aiding K.G.B. agents on American soil, or something like that), and the college is forced to fire him. Falsely accused, hopping mad and heading out of town, the disgraced Indy runs into a brash young hotshot in motorcycle leather named Mutt (Shia LaBeouf, who looks alarmingly like Bobby Darin). Mutt’s got a proposition: Hire me and I’ll lead you to a mythical lost city in the Amazon built entirely of gold, with scientific architecture that will not be discovered for 5,000 years! There’s a secret, see, about 13 crystal skulls protected by the living dead, one of which was stolen around the time Moses either parted the Red Sea or Charlton Heston made his screen debut, whichever came first. The kid’s mother, who disappeared in the jungle, has sent him a letter written in an ancient alphabet only Indy can decode. Find the temple and he’ll find his missing Mom! Find the missing skull and Indy will make archaeological history! Of course, Ms. Blanchett, the archfiend with the bad accent, who miraculously survived the nuclear blast in Nevada (which is now referred to as New Mexico), wants Indy to translate for the Soviets, so she can discover the power of spiritual energy and control the universe. Huh? Best not to ask questions.

To make a long and very boring story short, the trail leads from a campus malt shop all the way to Peru and the burial place of the conquistador who escaped with the crystal skull—a place that may have been built by aliens that look exactly like E.T. Mr. Spielberg is smart. Never throws away his old props, puppets, or storyboards. Never know when he might need them again.

Of course, Mutt’s mother turns out to be—are you sitting down?—Indy’s long-lost girlfriend Marion (welcome back, Karen Allen). Incredulously, Mutt himself turns out to be—are you lying down?—but never mind. The script isn’t very careful about logic or coherence. The important thing is the stunts, which are a long time arriving, and all seem to have been recycled from previous (and better) Indiana Jones movies. There’s a sword fight on two separate vehicles speeding through the jungle, an attack by natives with poison darts, three death-defying crashes over waterfalls in a Jeep, a plague of man-eating red ants and a rescue by monkeys who teach Mutt to swing on vines like Bomba the Jungle Boy. Nobody suffers any wound more serious than a razor burn, and Indy always finds his fedora. It’s as contrived and convoluted as all the other Indiana Jones movies, but not as much fun.

I finally left when E.T., Ms. Blanchett in her Buster Brown bangs, and the 13 crystal skulls disappeared not only into space, but “the space between spaces.” Even when he’s dishing up corn, the director of directors usually spreads it coherently. Not this time. George Lucas’ story line is impossible to follow, and I don’t know what to make of the abysmal script by David Koepp, who once wrote dazzling, original and imaginative screenplays (Apartment Zero remains one of my favorite movies of all time) before he discovered Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible and money. This movie appears to have been written in hieroglyphics. Long on rhetoric and short on thrills, it’s an Indiana Jones adventure they all seemed to be making up as they went along.

If Hillary Clinton doesn't make it this week, SNL's Amy Poehler will begin doing Ralph Nader impersonations instead. She's already been practicing, you see. This sounds funny, like the movie Baby Mama! [NY Daily News]

Harrison Ford pierced his ear after a "semi-drunken" lunch with Ed Bradley and Jimmy Buffett. Oh, Harrison, it could have happened to anyone. [P6]

Shia LeBeouf tried and tried, but couldn't score a date at The Beatrice Inn. [P6]

Ashley Dupre has been looking for a New York public relations agency to represent her and reportedly scored with the Susan Blond agency. Stay tuned for movie deal and a possible endorsement for a brand of men's socks. [NY Daily News]

Evan Rachel Wood can hardly handle Marilyn Manson's Mansinthe. [Intelligencer]

Gossip Girl is officially the most important show on televsion. [NY Mag]

Laura and Jenna Bush talk about collaborating on their children's book. [NY Daily News]

Eli Manning wed his fiancee in Mexico over the weekend. [NY Daily News]

Read Steve Cohen's take on the "greening" of the new Mets ballfield and a new green software-helper for Major Leage Baseball. [Steve Cohen]

Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg, Harrison Ford, and 50 Cent join forces to free Lolita from imprisonment. No, it's not an action-adventure movie; it's a benefit concert to free a whale from Miami Seaquarium. [gristmill.grist.org]

Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell will seek incoming Gov. David Paterson's help to stop the Broadwater project, a floating, 1,200-foot-long, 180-foot wide, 80-foot tall gas terminal in the Long Island Sound. [ The Day]

You will have to go to Eyebeam Atelier yourself to see the do-it-yourself urine recycling system that aims to extract valuable fertilizers from wastewater before it gets processed for reconsumption. (Side note: It appears that that new sweetener, Splenda, makes its way into wastewater without the slightest refinement or interference by your own kidneys. Click here for requisite "sweet pea" and "the Splenda of it all" gags.) [treehugger.com]

Asa Aarons explains carbon offsets to the uninitiated. [New York Daily News]

A former Grumman airfield in Long Island's Pine Barrens has become the habitat of the endangered Short-Eared Owl and Tiger Salamander, giving rise to a controversy over the planned development of a $1.5 billion resort that advocates say is needed to repair the Town of Riverhead's busted coffers. [The New York Times]

From Sweden comes Matroshka, a modular living construction that fits everything into 43 square feet. How's that for a small footprint? [treehugger]

And today's video presentation, courtesy WSJ. com, comes from Wal-Mart's Lee Scott. Punchline: "We are not green."

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Melissa Mathison is back on Central Park West, but in a much more petite place than the duplex she once shared with ex-husband Harrison Ford.

The two were married in 1983—one year after her film E.T. overtook Mr. Ford’s Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all time. By autumn of 2000, Mr. Ford had moved out of the family’s 12-room duplex at ritzy 101 Central Park West. Things got worse from there: They signed a contract to sell the duplex for $16 million to a hedge-fund manager already living in the building, but he was rejected by the co-op board; it eventually went for $11.5 million to another buyer.

When Mr. Ford and Ms. Mathison were divorced in 2004, he kept the 800-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyo., but she got a reported $85 million, plus a stake in his future earnings from films he made during their marriage.

Nevertheless, she paid last month the relatively small sum of $2.9 million, city records show, for a maisonette apartment at 50 Central Park West, five block down from her old duplex.

According to the listing with Brown Harris Stevens’ John Burger, the place has a “ballroom-sized” living/dining room with 13-foot ceilings, “original dentil moldings and ample wall space for displaying an art collection.” There’s a staff room on its own floor upstairs, plus the master bedroom suite has two walk-in closets and a steam shower.

On the downside, there’s no dark-paneled library with a wet bar like in the old duplex, and the master bedroom has two windows instead of the old seven (with five on the Park). But Ms. Mathison also wrote Martin Scorsese’s Dalai Lama picture Kundun, so she’s probably a bit Zen about petty material comparisons.

Mr. Burger had no comment, and Ms. Mathison did not return e-mail and phone messages.

Criminal charges facing Shia LaBeouf have just been dropped. The 21-year-old actor got himself into trouble last month for refusing to leave a Chicago Walgreens. After the drug store staff called the police on Nov. 4, the allegedly drunk-acting Transformers star was taken into custody briefly before being released for “very courteous and polite” behavior, according to officials at the time. Mr. LaBeouf only had to appear before the judge for a few minutes this morning, reportedly smiling as he learned that the misdemeanor criminal trespassing charge had been flushed. He next stars alongside Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which opens next year. [AP]

Paramount Pictures has taken over the campus of Yale University to film the forthcoming fourth installment of the popular Indiana Jones series. “They’ve transformed a whole block of storefronts to make them look like 1957,” reported rising senior Lauren Dunn, an English major, by phone the other day.

Construction along Chapel Street began late last week, and the production team has also set up shop in Yale’s main dining hall. “I peeked my head into Commons but I got into trouble,” Ms. Dunn said. “Someone said, ‘I’m sorry you can’t go in there; we have a confidentiality agreement.’”

Ms. Dunn, who was cast as an extra after waiting in line for four hours along with what she called “thousands” of other aspiring movie stars, is now also proudly bound by a confidentiality agreement. She did divulge that she would be playing a student, and will be wearing “period clothes.”

More details! Saybrook College master Mary Miller, an art-history professor specializing in Mesoamerican civilization, and her husband Edward Kamens, a professor of Japanese literature, have been cast as adult passers-by. “He’s got a fedora, and she’s wearing a suit, a corset and a wig,” divulged Ms. Dunn, who lopped off four inches of her hair for her own role.

Filming of the four-quel, tentatively titled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods and directed by Steven Spielberg, begins June 28. “It’s the opening scene of the movie,” Ms. Dunn burbled excitedly. “[Harrison Ford] is teaching a class and he hears some noise outside, which turns out to be an anti-Communist rally, and he goes out to investigate and he recognizes one of his old rivals from one of the other movies and he jumps on a motorcycle and ends up being chased by some guys in a car.”

That’s not all. “I’ve heard rumors that the archeological artifact that they’re looking for is the fountain of youth,” Ms. Dunn said. “But I don’t know.”

The pretty blond student said that on Sunday she had attended a barbecue where the movie was “pretty much the only topic of conversation.” Some underclassmen callously commented the Mr. Ford was getting a bit long in the tooth for action flicks (the last Indiana Jones movie came out in 1989), but Ms. Dunn opined that even at age 64, the star, who is in a committed relationship with Calista Flockhart, 42, was still worthy of being clutched while dangling from a rope over a snake pit—or something along those lines.

Ms. Dunn, currently enrolled in a “Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior” summer course, is understandably somewhat distracted from her studies. “I have a final exam on July 6, which is a possible filming date,” she said. “School does come first, although I may be filming the day before my final.”

She added: “I was on the phone with my aunt, and she said to me, ‘Lauren, if they ask you to go to Hollywood, just say yes.’”

Mr. Spielberg’s son, Theo, is currently a rising sophomore at Yale. A Paramount publicist refused to comment on the family connection, or any aspect of the production.