Crossing the Bridge (1992)

J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic! Oh, Lord! Oh why, God, why was this piece of barnacle douche sprayed across the silver screen in 1992! The year I graduated from High School had so many beautiful memories, but this intestinal pasta-press reminds me of the time I tried to Pierce my nose with a paper punch... it was a complete failure, but the scar still remains years afterward. Oh, Hully Gee. Let me back up. One of my all time best friends Isadora and I rented this infected turd on a Saturday night soon after its release, and have regretted this decision with regret and despair ever since. Just recently in 2003 Isadora and I visited the Museum of Man's Torture Through the Ages Exhibit and were horrified at the inhumanity of the exhibit. Our feelings about Crossing the Bridge are mildly less positive! Crossing the Bridge is the agonizing coming of rage film about three remarkably uninteresting Detroit teens in what passes in Writer/ Director Mike Binder's mind (may it rot) for the 1970s. The three bozos wander through life around Graduation time or so the narration (like unnecessary surgery) tells us until (Ding) they decide to make some scratch by transporting a tire full of drugs across the Canadian Border into Michigan in Danny's (Stephen Baldwin at his worst) crappy (yet too good for this movie) car. It's hinted that they don't want to end up like the couple who has been sitting on their porch watching traffic go by for the past decade because that's such a pathetic and lonely existence. Well, let me tell you, your filming all 10 years of them just watching traffic is no picnic for the audience either! I can imagine VCRs across the USA clicked off at that point. Did Binder know his movie was more boring than watching Ice Melt, so he put in a microcosm of this Visual Valium within the movie so the rest by comparison looked less boring? Well if so, he failed... it's terrible. Along the way the three unrealistic teens have to get their happy asses to Canada to meet with a group of Drug Dealers who look like a cross between Drew Carey's original Neighbors and some clowns who auditioned for the Almen Brothers Band but didn't have the proper grooming demanded by such a band(!), and act like caricatures of Jim McMahon's WWE characters! Somehow along the way Tim (Jason Gedrick, making one wish longingly for the comparative glory of Iron Eagle) pisses off these goobers, and so Dope Dealer #1 beats the crap out of him as Mort (Josh Charles of Dead Poet's Society "fame") continually states "I think he needs more!" After this beating Tim actually thanks Mort! No, I'm not kidding... it's because a broken limb would result in failed sports career. Yeah... yeah... yeah! It's written so badly though that I laughed my ass off. So, these creeps are that Gullible, huh? Of course even though he just got his ass kicked and thanked people for it the trio of terror still agrees to transport all the drugs to the US stuffed in the spare tire of Stephen Baldwin (I mean his car). Nice guys! I wonder if I beat them up they'd clean my bathroom!?! This insult of a picture drags on and on and on of course. Through a bloated and beaten face (not as ugly as the script) Tim actually decides to throw his letterman jacket off of a bridge (no not the bridge of the title... I wish... then it'd have been over)! So he's rejecting his sportsman imagery in metaphor... so what the hell was all that taking a beating instead of a broken limb horse feces? Of course Binder thinks he's funny when Baldwin's Danny screams "You asshole! That was my Jacket!" Is the script down there too, Stephen? It gets more agonizing after... I'm thinking... three... four hours of film time... when Baldwin stops at yet another bridge to throw his (actually Tim's) jacket off that bridge before crossing! Good thing Tim hadn't changed his mind! Mind you... there is no real catharsis here, or at least not one successfully translated onto the screen in this yellow squirt of celluloid... no... it pretty much just happens because Binder wanted it to. I hope Binder was high! I hope he was whacked out on so many of the prop-drugs that he couldn't come up with anything better than this skid-mark in the drawers of American Cinema! Spoiler Warning: If you haven't yet seen Crossing the Bridge and want to...Skip the rest of this and then call a shrink, man! We kept hoping... begging... the fates of cinema that the end would tie this all up, much like John Houston's The Dead all finally made sense in the end. Well, Mike Binder is no John Houston. If Mike Binder spends the rest of his life trying he might be an Alan Smithee! Crossing the Bridge is no The Dead or even Hercules Goes Bananas, and the ending of this film is the worst part of all! After... was it seven... eight hours... it was long... at long last the three sorry excuses for losers arrive at the Ambassador Bridge, the bridge of the title! The Border Guards are there (surprise... at the border... I almost had an arrhythmia), so our "heroes" elect to leave the car there... on the bridge... and walk away! Hmmm. Okay... An unattended car... in the middle of a busy bridge... with feds all around. That's not suspicious! Wouldn't that ensure that the car would be searched and the drugs found? Wouldn't they then run the registration, trace it to Danny and arrest him? What? No registration? Maybe not, but it's also made clear that Danny is known for the car, and any investigator worth his salt would find him! If the Tire is such a brilliant idea why leave the car in the first place? And hey, three teenage lamentables staggering away from the car... wouldn't that at the very least cause a cop to ask why? Okay, let's forget that entire plot point... The Drug Dealers know who they are, and so when the drugs don't arrive, won't they be highly pissed? I mean, they already beat the bile out of Iron Eagle-boy because they didn't like him. Aren't the three guys we're supposed to be identifying with dead ducks? I guess Binder didn't think of that. Idiot! But, wait... didn't I get the coming of age allegory about youth transpiring into adulthood? Didn't I see, couldn't I feel the compelling moral dilemmas? No! This is a steaming heap of sentimental hogwash without even the class to respect the audience and make it even vaguely interesting! But isn't it such a beautiful period piece? No! It was so wholly inaccurate to the period that I laughed every five minutes until I felt my insides being rearranged by this scalpel of a story line! I can't count the inaccuracies, so I will not! I get more excited picking out socks! The plot holes, the boredom and the inane dialogue, not to mention the incredibly poor writing (on the whole) and directing make me long for such comparative masterpieces as Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda! Zero stars for Crossing the Bridge! That's right, it gets a Dog! I almost feel bad giving it a dog because puppies are so cute and full of life, energy and happiness, that this flat tire is an insult to canines the globe over! Woof, woof, woof, damn it! They may never find WMD in Iraq, but I've heard rumors that in one of the Republican Guard torture facilities amid the hooks, chains, and saws there was a well worn Laser Disc copy of Crossing the Bridge reserved for the most ornery of political prisoners. Saddam, you Bastard!