A little speculation on Crossing Over

Just now I was scanning the list of films releasing this month and I came across a new Harrison Ford picture called Crossing Over.

This film has nothing to do with psychic dudes who tell you stuff you already know about your childhood.

It's a film by Wayne Kramer, a South African immigrant who wrote and directed The Cooler (yay) and Running Scared (boo). It appears to be based on a short film he once wrote and directed in 1996. The film is about the experience of immigrants in America, both legal and illegal, and how difficult it is to become a part of the melting pot. It's designed the way Crash is, with several intersecting stories about people on different sides of the issue.

So it's right up my alley. I don't get political about much, but I will fight to the death to defend my kids from the anti-immigration sentiment in this country. A lot of the people who rail against illegal immigrants have never actually spent time with any of them and the issues are never as cut and dry as those Minute Men would have you think.

This is one of the reasons I'm writing Fear of Clowns. I assumed a lot of things about illegal immigrants before I moved to California and I have learned a great deal about my ignorance since I started teaching at a school filled with Mexicans and Salvis. I want to try to write a film that looks at their lives as they actually are, not as some melodramatic tale meant to preach at the audience.

And I liked Crash, but it's a damn preachy movie, and there are some obvious similarities to this film.

I fear this film may turn out to be a similar story and I don't know if I want to watch a film that lectures me for two hours. It's hard to tell though, because there isn't much information out there on this film.

The Weinsteins are involved in this but there's no publicity, no posters, no trailers, no nothing. A movie this political and with this big a cast - Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd - and nothing? I only saw it because I was scrolling through impending releases. I also wonder why the top four actors in a film about immigration are all white Americans - but I'm willing to reserve judgement until I see the film.

I'd love to read the script if I could get ahold of it because I'm terribly curious. I'm not worried it will resemble my own script too much because I'm writing about my kids, but I'd still like to see its potential. I can't even find any reviews anywhere. And that's a bad sign.