MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Crisscross’: Unveil the Human Story

“Crisscross” (citywide), set in 1969 during the days around the Apollo moon launch, captures something about that controversial decade almost perfectly.

It’s a mixed achievement: a small, movingly done human story swallowed up in a more conventional crime thriller. Yet, if it fails, it doesn’t fail ignobly. The smaller story, adapted by screenwriter Scott Somer from his 1978 novella, shows us a 12-year-old Key West boy’s relationship with his mother (Goldie Hawn), a divorcee, waitress and stripper; it’s sharp at unveiling this pair’s camaraderie, tensions and understated jealousies. Then, once the son, Chris Cross (David Arnott), discovers a cocaine stash in a fish torn open by his dog, “Crisscross” begins to slip right into the slick, grooved, coincidence-heavy, over-violent tracks of most post-1980 American crime thrillers.

That’s too bad, because “Crisscross” has many fine qualities: a casual poetry, a compassionate but unforced sympathy for ordinary people and their problems, an often striking sense of verisimilitude and truth, executed by director Chris Menges, making his second feature after “A World Apart.”

Goldie Hawn instigated this movie, but she doesn’t seem to be playing star. She merges into the ensemble, exuding the slightly weary sexuality of a round-the-track survivor tired of a golden Kewpie-doll image.

The rest of the cast is equally good--although Arliss Howard sometimes seems to be consciously mimicking all of Robert Redford’s looks and smiles. There are striking moments throughout: a dingy striptease bar, a forlorn image of the Crosses’ car stalling on a Key West bridge, and one beautiful scene where Chris confronts his Vietnam vet dad (Keith Carradine) in a tranquil monastery garden, a scene full of tenderness, regret and inner terror.

‘Crisscross’

Goldie Hawn: Tracy Cross

David Arnott: Chris Cross

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presentation of a Hawn/Sylbert Movie Co. production. Director Chris Menges. Producer Anthea Sylbert. Executive producer Bill Finnegan. Screenplay by Scott Somer. Cinematographer Ivan Strassburg. Editor Tony Lawson. Music Trevor Jones. Production design Cripian Sallis. With Arliss Howard, Keith Carradine. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (Language, sensuality, nudity, drug use.)