At one point in this film, Ben Affleck’s character says, “Sometimes God just likes to put two guys in a paper bag and just let ‘em rip.” What he means, of course, is that sometimes writers like to put two guys in a paper bag—in this case, Ben Affleck and the always-watchable Samuel L. Jackson. On paper it has the makings of an entertaining bout of Celebrity Deathmatch, but writers Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin get muddled up trying to figure out exactly what the fighting is about.
Affleck plays a young, savvy Wall Street lawyer named Gavin Banek. Banek has everything the modern yuppie could ask for: he’s married to a senior partner’s daughter (Amanda Peet), he’s had a clandestine affair with his secretary (Toni Collette), and he’s in charge of a multimillion-dollar charity fund. Jackson plays Doyle Gipson, a separated insurance salesman, recovering alcoholic and father of two. One morning, on his way to an important hearing concerning the fund, Banek gets into a fender-bender with Gipson, who was on his way to a custody hearing for his two boys. Instead of simply swapping insurance info, Banek insists on cutting Gipson a blank cheque—and in the process accidentally leaves a vital legal document in Jackson’s possession.
No big deal, right? Wrong. Thanks to the condescending treatment Gipson receives at Banek’s hands (including being stranded on the off-ramp), Gipson’s not in a very forgiving mood. Both men soon find that their fateful accident could have life-destroying consequences. What follows over the course of the day is a war of escalation between them. (The best tactical strike is Banek’s messing with Gipson’s credit rating, with the help of a smarmy-sinister hacker played by Dylan Baker.)
While there’s a certain nasty thrill in watching these two guys get increasingly creative in their mutual sabotage, the writers continually undercut it with an obligatory “why can’t we all just get along” message that feels trite from the start and gets tiresome by the end. Every time either man goes for the jugular, the next scene shows him having a crisis of conscience over it—at least until he finds out what kind of ugly one-upmanship the other has perpetrated.
Worse, the writers try to shoehorn all of America’s divisive issues into the film. Is Banek’s feud with Gipson about black versus white? Rich versus poor? Republican versus Democrat, perhaps? At times (especially in a scene where Jackson treats a couple of white ad execs in a bar to his idea of a Tiger Woods commercial), it’s as if Taylor and Tolkin are trying to make the film an allegory for the breakdown of civilized society in America. That might be asking a bit much of conventional Hollywood fare, but the attempt is laudable if not entirely successful. Changing Lanes is an enjoyable ride for the most part, but eventually you’ll find yourself wishing the film had simply stuck to road rage and left all the middle-of-the-road moralizing stranded on the highway.
(2.5/4)