‘Crossing Over’ collapses with Sean Penn crossed out

This should be a happy moment for "Crossing Over," a movie that wrapped with heavy-hitters Harrison Ford and Sean Penn as the A's in its A-list cast.

Penn is a newly minted Oscar winner, and this hopped-up immigration drama, set in the land of "Milk" and honey, should be able to tout him on the marquee.

Penn, alas, is a no-show in "Crossing Over" - he demanded to be cut out of the finished picture for unspecified reasons. It's speculated that Penn didn't like the way "Crossing Over" treated certain Arab/Iranian characters - neither did some watchdog groups, which demanded that cuts be made to the film.

Other reports say Penn asked to be removed because the movie sucked, begging the question of why he appears in "I Am Sam."

If the latter is true, then I'm forced to agree with Penn's review, but in deference to writer-director Wayne Kramer ("Running Scared"), I don't know how you salvage a movie after amputating a major star.

The resulting film is choppy and disconnected, which seems to confirm rumors that it was edited by various combinations of Penn, Ford, and executive producer Harvey Weinstein.

The finished product looks as though it was designed to satisfy egos, not viewers. Ford is one of the few characters who looks good - a veteran immigration officer in L.A. with a heart of gold. And Penn does not look bad, because he is gone.

Apparently Ray Liotta was not in the booth - he's the immigration bureaucrat who demands rough sex from foxy immigrant actress (Alice Eve) looking for a work visa.

He's married to Ashley Judd, a lawyer defending an Arab girl persecuted by Homeland Security for writing a high school report sympathetic to the 9/11 hijackers.

Yes, that's an outrageous narrative coincidence, the kind that won "Crash" an Oscar, and there are plenty more of them in "Crossing Over" - a movie to savor if your tastes run toward the garish, as Kramer's certainly do. His movies are lurid, but almost never dull (the yuppie pedophile dungeon masters of "Running Scared" remain an all-time movie wild-card).

Too bad Kramer can't include a "behind the scenes" segment like they do for DVDs. In this case, the "making of" documentary would be more surreal than the movie itself.