Wall Street lawyer Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) is on his way to court. Working man Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) is headed to a hearing at the same building. Banek cuts Gipson off, causing an accident that damages Gipson’s car. Gipson wants to exchange insurance information, but Banek rushes away from the scene, leaving Gipson out in the rain (literally and figuratively).

Upon arriving at his hearing, Banek realizes he accidentally handed an important file to Gipson; when Banek attempts to retrieve it, Gipson, whose late arrival at his own hearing cost him custody of his two young sons, refuses to hand it over. Desperate, Banek begins use every means at his disposal to destroy Gipson’s life. But Gipson, who feels he has nothing left to lose, soon proves he can give as well as he can get.

CRITIQUE

Changing Lanes is something you don’t see every day--an ethical thriller. You know why you don’t see ethical thrillers every day? Because more often than not they don’t really work. Sure, they can work in the realm of the written word, but not so much in the world of film. Pieces like this are better thought than said or played; characters in this sort of story are conflicted internally and movies have a difficult time portraying interior action.

Movies require people to act and speak, and that’s exactly where Changing Lanes shoots itself in the foot. Much of its dialogue is declamatory (in both senses of the word), and much of what it requires its main characters to do is farfetched and melodramatic.

I’ll use two scenes to illustrate the movie’s major flaws. First is a scene in which Affleck, who at the time is in the midst of the very sort of crisis of conscience you’d expect him to undergo, has dinner with his wife, who is played by Amanda Peet.

Peet’s character is the daughter of Affleck’s boss, and she grew up knowing exactly the sort of underhanded things in which her father was involved. She knows Affleck, too, is involved in such dealings, and she knows he has had an affair (just as her father did at one point). But none of this matters to her. In fact, she married Affleck because she knew he was ruthless, and she knew his ruthlessness would afford her the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. She also knows about Affleck’s missing file, and she knows about a possible workaround to the problem.

All of this is imparted to Affleck’s character in a long speech, with Peet spelling it out for him (and us). The scene opens, she explains all of it to him, the scene ends. It’s dumb, it’s lazy, it’s heavy-handed, and it’s an insult to the intelligence of the audience. The only way to make it more so would have been to have Peet set up a projector and use a PowerPoint presentation to walk Affleck through it.

Later (at least I think it’s later; my interested had seriously waned by this point), Jackson is seen going into a hardware store. Affleck is then seen getting into his car, and Jackson (you guessed it) follows him in a taxi. Jackson has the driver pull up next to Affleck, at which point Jackson holds up a tire iron. Immediately thereafter the front driver’s side tire of Affleck’s car comes loose, causing him to spin out of control. He gets out of his car, walks a few steps, and what should be sitting right in front of him? Yep, it’s Jackson’s wrecked car, still sitting exactly where he left earlier in the movie. Amazing how that worked out, huh? (Even more amazing is that Affleck never even comes close to hitting another car while he’s spinning out. Guess traffic in New York isn’t half as bad as it’s made out to be.)

There’s a much better movie lurking around the edges of this one, and it’s a loss for everyone that director Roger Michell and writers Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin didn’t realize this. Sydney Pollock and Richard Jenkins have a couple of scenes as the heads of the firm for which Affleck works (Pollock’s character is also the aforementioned father-in-law).

Ostensibly the villains of the piece, they’re two clever, vicious, and completely amoral men. Thing is, they’re far more interesting than anything involving Jackson and Affleck’s characters. The scene in which Jenkins (who, as usual, is fantastic) hatches the plan to save their hides and then he and Pollock (who is also great) attempt to get Affleck to go along with it is brilliant in its simplicity and clarity.

If only the rest of the movie were that good and that focused.

THE VIDEO

The 2.35:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--nicely captures the movie’s desaturated, blue-tinged visuals. Given the cold stylistics and the tight framing (this movie contains more close-ups than Jonathan Demme’s entire output), nothing here really pops or catches the eye, but the source was apparently flawless; colors--for what they are, anyway--are well rendered. The image is a bit on the soft side, although this appears to be intentional; couple this softness with the desaturation process, though, and you end up with slightly weakened blacks and a minor loss of detail.

THE AUDIO

The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio, much like the video, is standard as these things go. Exteriors feature the expected ambient crowd noises, car sounds, etc., while the mix tends to collapse into the front channels for interiors. But dialogue is the driving force here, and it always sounds fine, as does David Arnold’s score (which sounds as if it had been composed for a ‘70s flick). French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included. English, English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary by director Roger Michell is dry, boring, and uninformative. Michell has little to say, and when he does talk he has a tendency to simply narrate the onscreen action.

The Making of Changing Lanes (15 minutes) is an EPK-style promotional featurette.

The Writers’ Perspective (6 minutes) combines clips from the movie with comments from Taylor and Tolkin, who discuss their favorite scenes.

Two deleted and one extended scene (9 minutes total) offer two superfluous scenes of Affleck at Jackson at their respective places of work, and a longer version of a scene in which Affleck chats with a priest.

Closing out the bonus material is the movie’s theatrical trailer, which is the only extra presented in high-def.

FINAL THOUGHT

Watch Michael Clayton again instead.