Changing Lanes Review
by Eugene Novikov (lordeugene_98 AT yahoo DOT com)June 5th, 2002
Changing Lanes (2002)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"Better luck next time!"
Starring Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Sydney Pollack, Amanda Peet, Kim Staunton, Toni Collette. Directed by Roger Michell. Rated R.
Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson try to make each other's lives miserable in Changing Lanes, an oddball morality play from Notting Hill director Roger Michell. Not surprisingly, the somber, downbeat movie was marketed as a nail-biting thriller which led, as it always does, to word-of-mouth backlash as people didn't get what they paid for. It's flawed in its own ways, sure, but it's also too smart to pander to the instincts that would demand a hanging-by-the-fingernails climax. The ending we're given isn't much better all things considered, but at least it's not what we'd expect.
Affluent lawyer Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck, and by the way, "Gavin Banek"?) sets off down the FDR in a rush to deliver a set of important documents to a courtroom, documents that will ensure a yacht and then some for him and his father-in-law boss, played by Sydney Pollack. Making a lane change (whaddya know?), he crashes into the significantly less well-off Doyle Gipson (Jackson), who is also rushing to a courtroom, only his intent is to stop his beloved family from leaving him. Gavin, eager to settle the matter and get on with his life, offers Doyle a blank check. Doyle says he wants to do it right. Gavin is in a hurry. Doyle asks for a lift. Gavin drives off, veritably flipping the frazzled man off with a snarky "better luck next time!"
Life goes on. Gavin, whose car still runs, gets to court on time. Doyle, whose car doesn't, is late, and the decision is made without him. ("You know, if this was my family, and it was this important to me, I'd have been here on time. Next case.") Seems that Lady Luck is only finishing off what she started. Except... Gavin dropped that folder he needed while arguing with Doyle. And Doyle picked it up, and now he's mad. Both men are desparate, and soon, Gavin is receiving faxes of the ever-so-important documents with "BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!" scrawled in what looks like red crayon, and Doyle is getting his bank account frozen, which prevents him from getting a loan which he needs to get the house, which he needs to... Let the games begin.
Changing Lanes isn't as grandly confrontational as the trailer would have you believe. It takes place over a short period of time, and the two characters hardly have the time to completely ruin each other. The point, I think, is that this isn't a gimmick movie, a high concept designed to get people into theaters and gratify them, even if a certain marketing department is attempting to make it so. It's not interested in easy pay-offs or non sequitur action sequences. The most that actually happens, in the way that the Titanic sinking is something that happens, is the poorer man crashing a computer monitor through an unassuming bank officer's plate glass window.
Affleck and Jackson are cast to a T, with the former giving us a slightly less ornate version of the hotshot stockbroker in Boiler Room; there is even an issue with those documents/Macguffins being potentially illegal and definitely immoral. Jackson begins as your ailing everyman -- the painful courtroom scene was an astonishing moment of pure empathy for me as a viewer -- and then becomes a sort of D-Fens from Falling Down, a man at war not only with his cocky, if increasingly desparate nemesis, but with the entire world. Amanda Peet has a nifty moment early on as Gavin's wife who tries to convince him to Do the Wrong Thing.
The movie starts to preach a bit in its last act, and it doesn't earn its pat, self-important ending, perhaps going too far in the opposite direction from hanging by the fingernails. We get the undeniable feeling that it couldn't really end this way, that the movie is being far too optimistic, that the screenwriter should read some Thomas Hobbes.
Then again, maybe that was the intention. This is, after all, a morality play and not, like Falling Down was, a "tale of urban reality." And it's pretty damn good, crafty and well-made, unexpectedly serious and seriously interesting. I'm not sure how much there is to learn when all is said and done -- the message is more than a touch too easy, like an Aesop's Fable -- but flat resolution aside, Changing Lanes is less trite and more provocative than you may think.
Grade: B+
Up Next: Manic
©2002 Eugene Novikov
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