Review of Changing Lanes (2002) by Steven R — 29 Oct 2007

After a mid-morning scrape on the FDR, two men from radically different backgrounds become locked in a high-stakes game of revenge. That premise is enough for a decent movie, but its power is doubled here by an intelligent moral subtext.

What could have been just another urban action film becomes not only an exciting thriller, but a finely nuanced commentary on contemporary values: in a corrupt world, doing the right thing can be more revolutionary, more "edgy", than doing the wrong.

Affleck is wonderful as Gavin Banek, the morally-conflicted Wall Street attorney desperately trying to recover a lost file; and Jackson, as Doyle Gipson, sets aside his trademark coolness to convincingly portray an estranged, alcoholic father struggling to salvage what's left of his life.

The tone is elevated enormously by some inspired casting in the supporting roles: William Hurt as Doyle's AA sponsor; Sidney Pollack as Gavin's venal father-in-law and boss; Dylan Baker as an online Mr Fix-It; Toni Collette as Gavin's co-worker; and Amanda Peet as his pragmatically devoted wife.

Roger Michell's direction is never self-consciously showy, yet perfectly captures the feeling of a frantic struggle through the oppressive streets of a rainy New York day. There are some speechy moments when the morality theme is hammered home a little too hard, but for the most part writers Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin manage to show it rather than say it, and at 99 minutes they know precisely when to cut it off.

It isn't perfect - there are some odd jumps, sloppy writing (why is the stock market open on Good Friday?), and a heavy-handed bar scene that could've been cut. Still, that this film could so easily have settled for being a cat-and-mouse story of visually spectacular revenge makes it all the more thrilling that it isn't.

The artistry and intelligence of its creators and performers ensure that "Changing Lanes" is not only entertaining, but intellectually engaging on an entirely different level.