Written and directed by Wayne Kramer (The Cooler, Running Scared), Crossing Over conjures the kind of karmic kaleidoscope familiar to those who have seen Crash or Traffic or Fast Food Nation. As in those films, seemingly unrelated lives smash into each other in Crossing Over, with illegal immigration the propelling force here. Kramer's film doesn't work -- it's too spot-on, and characters like Summer Bishil's Bangladeshi teenager are written with too specific a purpose in mind -- but it does have one off-the-charts performance: Cliff Curtis playing an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent named Hamid Baraheri.
You know Curtis, even if you think you don't --- he's on movie screens right now as the charming rogue in Push, and he's played everything from an Iraqi refugee in Three Kings to a Latino gangster in Training Day, from a would-be world saver in Sunshine to a distant dad in Whale Rider. He's good in everything, but, more importantly, he's good as everything. Curtis is a New Zealander, but casting directors have turned him into a one-man United Nations.
If he weren't such a good actor, his poly-ethnic look would simply ensure he'd disappear into the background. But he is good -- light and loose where he needs to be and fully invested when it's required. As Ford's partner, he sells us the facts subtly -- with a glance here, a pause there.
Hamid's plotline bends toward darkness, and we are eventually given a scene too good to spoil, with everything inside Hamid bursting out like pus from a boil or blood from a wound. It's a big, bloody mess -- and Curtis makes you believe every moment of it, your heart and mind riveted by his passion.
