Crash leads to battle of wills

Changing Lanes
Stars Ben Affleck, Samuel L Jackson and Toni Collette. Rated M. From RedBack DVD.
Reviewer: PTE Simone Heyer

Changing Lanes is about black against white, rich against poor and, ultimately, right against wrong.

Doyle (Jackson) is addicted to chaos. He is one of those people who, if they’re not in a crisis, they create one.

He’s a reformed alcoholic and his former wife blames the drink on Doyle’s inability to be the right kind of father to their two sons. He sells insurance and drives a beat-up old car.

On his way to the divorce courts Doyle’s car is struck by Gavin (Affleck), in his latest-model Mercedes. Gavin, too, is on the way to the courts, only he is a lawyer, defending his firm in a decision made against a non-profit community aid program.

In an effort to get to court on time, Gavin accepts responsibility for the accident and thrusts Doyle a blank cheque.

Doyle insists on fixing the situation in legal, correct terms and doesn’t accept the cheque. Gavin jumps back into his dented Merc and hurries toward the city, not allowing Doyle to ride with him.

In the courts, he realises he’s lost important papers crucial to his case, and hopes Doyle has picked them up at the scene of the accident.

He later spots an emotionally wrecked Doyle walking up the street in the pouring rain and asks after the file. Doyle has just received the news that his ex-wife is taking his kids to Oregon – half a world away. He’s less than helpful about the file.

Gavin gets annoyed and from there the two start a tit-for-tat battle until the end of the day.

All sorts of nasty tricks are pulled – including Gavin using his money to have Doyle bankrupted and Doyle removing the nuts from a wheel on Gavin’s Merc. Both men learn something about themselves and that wealth doesn’t buy more cunning, only heavier blows.

This is a great movie full of little twists. Its message is that obstinacy and cruelty doesn’t win all the time and, perhaps, that good conquers over bad in the end.