Changing Lanes (2002) *** 1/2
Directed by Roger Michell. Written by Chap Taylor & Michael Tolkin from a Taylor story. Photography, Salvatore Totino. Editing, Christopher Tellefsen. Production design, Kristi Zea. Music, David Arnold. Producer, Scott Rudin. Cast: Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson. Kim Staunton, Toni Collette, Sydney Pollack, Tina Sloan, Amanda Peet, Richard Jenkins, et al. A Paramount release. 99 minutes. R (language)
Directed by Roger Michell. Written by Chap Taylor & Michael Tolkin from a Taylor story. Photography, Salvatore Totino. Editing, Christopher Tellefsen. Production design, Kristi Zea. Music, David Arnold. Producer, Scott Rudin. Cast: Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson. Kim Staunton, Toni Collette, Sydney Pollack, Tina Sloan, Amanda Peet, Richard Jenkins, et al. A Paramount release. 99 minutes. R (language)Give this movie a medal for the best title of the year.
Literally, the lanes are on a New York highway where crossing them wrongly has the luxury car of lawyer Gavin Banek (Affleck) cream the modest vehicle of insurance salesman Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson.) Gavin, in a tearing hurry to get to court, gives the other man a blank check but won't stay for the insurance formalities. Doyle is stranded--and mad as hell. He too is in a big hurry, he too must appear in court--for a settlement with his alienated wife.
Figuratively, the lanes are the changes in the brains and psyches of key figures, their feelings, behavior, lifestyles and so on. Clever title, indeed.
Gavin, a hotshot legal eagle, is Number Three in the firm of Andrew Delano (Sydney Pollack) who is also the younger man's father-in-law. Gavin is carrying a crucial document signed by a rich person on his deathbed. It gives the law firm certain financial privileges. These are contested.
Doyle, a recovering alcoholic, wants to win back his wife and two children before they move to Portland, Oregon. He has, in fact, mended his ways and even bought a house for the family.
At court, Gavin realizes that his very important file has disappeared -- that most likely Doyle picked it up by accident. This leads to a strange-bedfellows antagonism between the two men, in situations and feelings which are both complicated and complex as well as clear. In the course of those human events, both of them change lanes in their views of life, their moral dilemmas, their values and their relationships with others.
I will not give away the twists and turns of the story, but I can state that they are most interesting and credible. They open new horizons for the protagonists notwithstanding some stretched out yet acceptable coincidences.
The not-tall tale covers one day, Good Friday. The movie could have been subtitled "The Bad Good Friday," partly because it reminds me of "The Long Good Friday" (U.K. 1980) which made Bob Hoskins into a star. * (see footnote.) Here the film made for me Ben Affleck into a star and confirmed my esteem for Samuel L. Jackson.
Affleck has appeared in some 40 movies including "Good Will Hunting" which he wrote with Matt Damon. But he's had mostly secondary roles. Few of those films are memorable. Some (e.g. some, "Reindeer Games") are awful. But with "Changing Lanes" Affleck acquires a new, solid third dimension. Almost the same can be said for Jackson, with about 90 pictures to his credit, although he did star in interesting items such as "Rules of Engagement," "The Caveman's Valentine," "Pulp Fiction," etc.
The casting is tops. Double-threat director/actor Sydney Pollack is forceful. Toni Colette as lawyer Michelle (dozens of pounds lighter than in "Muriel's Wedding") is ambiguous and credibly not a glamour-puss. Kim Staunton is tough and touching as Doyle's sorely hurt wife. All the performances hit bulls-eye, even in the smallest roles.
Everything than could happen and/or go awry on that Good Friday does. Everything is rapid and compacted. Everything is shown in individual (and transformable) points of view. There may be a time when you might think "overkill," but the feeling soon vanishes, except perhaps when the plot's balancing act is looking for closure. But it's a solid melodrama, and no mellow drama.
The production values are "echt-New York" convincing. The camera work is by Salvatore Totino who is above all a maker of commercials. In tandem with editor Tellefsen, Totino puts to excellent use his experience with fast shots, handheld cameras, fast cuts, strong moods and urgencies that fit perfectly the characters' turmoil, emotions and pressures. It is all the more dramatic as the movie belongs to the finite-time category which everyone has to face time and again in real life. The cinematic difference here is that the clock is not ticking away toward a physical catastrophe (cf. the all-too tiresome, familiar explosion or execution, and such) but toward elements of private life, relationships and morality.
The absence of do-good-ism fits the people and their actions efficiently. The wrap-up does give out a faint scent of Frank Capra-like morality-- a sort of Gavin's Road to Damascus revelation-- but the entire movie is a powerful broadside on the illegalities of the legal profession, a subject that is highly topical nowadays.
* Note: To be exact, Hoskins had been previously discovered in "Zulu Dawn," (1979) which was the brainchild of its producer Nate Kohn, an Urbana native.