Changing Lanes

December 10, 2004

Rated: R Runtime: 99 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Changing Lanes is one of those movies that after you watch it, you know you’ve seen a good story and a very well made film, but you really don’t particularly care to ever see it again. There are some classic pictures that you can watch over and over again, like The Godfather, but this isn’t one of them. This film is well directed, well acted and well written, and probably one of the best made movies so far this year, but it lacks that intangible magic spark.

Changing Lanes

Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson star in this movie. Ben is a Wall Street lawyer named Gavin and Jackson is an ordinary working stiff named Doyle. They meet on the FDR in New York City when both aren’t paying attention to the road and they have a fender bender. Both are trying to make it to separate court appointments on time. Gavin gets impatient after a quick failed attempt to find his insurance card and drives off leaving Doyle and his disabled car stuck. “Better luck next time” says the lawyer as he drives off.

This sets a chain of events in motion that leads to probably the worst day of either man’s life. Doyle ends up being late for court and walking in just in time to find the judge has ruled his divorced wife can take his kids and move across country with no visitation rights for him although he has with him a plan to allow them all to stay in New York. But the judge has ruled and is not interested in anything Doyle has to say since he didn’t make it on time.

Meanwhile Gavin has made it to court to find that the absolutely most crucial folder to his case must’ve fallen out back at the accident. And yes, Doyle has found it. Gavin has a case worth hundreds of millions riding on that folder and risks jailtime for being incompetent enough to lose it. Doyle meanwhile is in no hurry to give it back as he’s still stinging from losing his life due to this guy just driving off and saying “better luck next time”.

This movie could’ve gone the easy route of being a simple vengance piece with each man trying to one up the other. Although there is a bit of that, the movie goes much deeper than that and really gets deep into both characters and their flawed lives. Every action they take as they are uncivil to them seems to come back and bite them twice as hard. Although as guys we feel that if it were us in either position there would’ve been a major ass whipping pretty early on in the movie, we can appreciate this kind of story and it was compelling although it unfolded somewhat slowly.

But perhaps our largest disappointment is we had a nice R-rated movie here and we didn’t get to hear Samuel L. Jackson use the “MF” word even once! We were waiting for it, and we did get it once, but it was from Ben!

We are giving this movie 3 stars on the Movies for Guys scale. If you look at our red bar on the right side of the screen you’ll see why. The movie also is a bit slow to unfold. However, the movie is worth seeing, if not on the big screen, certainly on DVD because the performances are strong and it’s a story worth watching, though probably only once.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Ben Affleck, Drama, R, Samuel L. Jackson, Sydney Pollack, Theatrical, Toni Collette, William Hurt