Changing Lanes (2002)

Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) is a high power lawyer with a big case. Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) is an insurance salesman in AA struggling with his divorce. Their worlds collide when they get into a car accident. Stress for time, Gavin runs off before they could exchange information but he drops an important file. Now Gavin needs Doyle's help to get the file back. Doyle isn't very cooperative since he couldn't get to divorce court and he lost his kids.These are not likable people. It's dark stuff. It's fill with anger and desperation. It's ugly and it's not a fun watch. Ben Affleck is basically a callous jerk who's losing his moral compass. Jackson is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. One unlikeable character is maybe enough, but two is too much to take. This movie bashes the audience with moral ugliness. It's heavy handed and that's the part that I dislike.

To me, this movie was a depiction of the tension between the needs of the ego of the immature person and the needs of a person to follow their bliss and serve more than the ego as one becomes a true adult. The scene in front of the painting where Gavin Banek describes the girl at the beach is a description of a person wrenched between the "house' they have spent their life building and the call TODAY to the life you were meant to live: "It's like you go to the beach. You go down to the water. It's a little cold. You're not sure you want to go in. There's a pretty girl standing next to you, and you know that if you just asked her your name, you would leave with her. Forget your life, whoever you came with, and leave the beach with her. And after that day, you remember. Not every day, every week… she comes back to you. It's the memory of another life you could have had. Today is that girl." Gavin (and Doyle?) finds the "edge" that everyone should find, where you find a way to use your talents in service of your calling. Unfortunately, usually first it involves the fall. Then, comes the lane change. I loved the acting and directing as well.

This movie is everything that is wrong with Wall Street and everything that is wrong with Hollywood.It could be said that this movie is a morality tale, a look into the mind of main character Gavin Banek (Affleck) as he wrestles with the wrongs he has done.The problem? Gavin Banek continues to perpetrate horrible act after horrible act as he punishes Doyle Gibson (Jackson) for an incident that is Banek's fault. HE doesn't just get malicious, he commits multiple federal crimes until the point where Gibson is finally pushed into pushing back...and then Banek continues to commit FURTHER crimes.In the end the moral is that all of the damage can be undone and so Gavin Banek is a "good" person.Banek flees the scene of a car accident that he causes causing Doyle to miss a custody hearing and lose his children.Banek has a hacker destroy Doyle's credit, costing him the chance to purchase a house and save his family.Banek goes to the school of Doyle's children and tells them that Doyle is going to kidnap his own children, and then leaves a message for Doyle that his children have been injured in school...leading to Doyle's arrest.Banek had been cheating on his wife with someone at his law firm.Banek KNOWINGLY defrauded an elderly millionaire so that his father in law could gain control of a charitable foundation worth over 100 million dollars.Then, Bank "makes good" by seeing the light and works to undo the damage he's done, rolling back all the harm he's done. This is supposed to make him sympathetic...and a "good man".Screw that. I spent most of the movie hoping that Banek, his unlikable wife and his horrid father in law would die horribly. They are the epitome of everything that is wrong with our country and yet we are to believe that everything can be okay. That all of the harm that Banek did can be undone and we can learn that Banek is a "good" person simply by his undoing everything he's done? Screw Affleck for making this propagandist piece of crap!

Don't worry the Spoiler is at the end and I'll warn you.So I wasn't expecting anything , to the matter of fact i was expecting something awful , boring and very commercial , but wait, I was so so Wrong this is a dark clever film , very well acted A surprise for me because if Ben Affleck is in a movie I think twice before I watch it (but I have to recognize lately he has being all right) and Samuel Jackson after snake on a plane I don't know what to expect but they did great.The script is very clever , dark and original the directing is nice nothing you haven't seem before but all properly crafted, the rest of the cast is solid and how could you go wrong with Sydney Pollack , William Hurt ,Tonni Collete ,Richard Jenkins...At the end I recomed this film specially if you catch it by surprise like me give it a change You'll not regret.***SPOILERRRR*** The only think I would have change is the end and I'm not saying is bad the one that the movie have , but it makes it alittle commercial , but at the same time it makes it fair; and that is a contradiction because one of the points of the story is showing that live isn't always fair. So I would have ended the film when they finish the conversation in the Cofee Shop after the day of all the events 11 minutes earlier that will be the Cannes film festival cut :=) the other one you can take it to Hollywood. Anyways a great surprise.WATCH IT IF YOU CAN.