It is Good Friday. Under normal circumstances, Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) and Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) would be unlikely ever to meet. Gavin is just beginning his career as a high-flying Wall Street lawyer, is married without children, and is white. Doyle is a middle-aged low-income telesalesman, is divorced with two sons, and is black. They might as well live on different planets, but in fact they are destined to collide with one another while changing lanes in poor weather. In the aftermath of this accident, both men lose vitally important courtcases, and their ensuing anger and frustration leads to an escalating series of vindictive reprisals against one another. Eventually they learn that we all live together in the same hell, and only we have the power to turn it into something like heaven.

Samuel L. Jackson, for once playing someone his own age, is excellent. Ben Affleck, on the other hand, always seems only to play Ben Affleck, and this film is no exception. So it's too bad that he is forced, even if only briefly, to share the screen with Amanda Peet, who plays Gavin's corrupt wife with subtle understatement in a crucial 'temptation' scene. Here, Peet continues to outclass her fellow actors, as she did in 'The Whole Nine Yards' and 'High Crimes'. Somebody ought to give this versatile actress the leading role she deserves.

'Changing Lanes' is reminiscent of 'Falling Down' in its use of roadrage as a metaphor for the moral malaise in contemporary American society. Director Roger Michell shows the destructiveness of retaliatory justice, in a world where basically good people can easily slip into wrongdoing and, once they have slipped, have great trouble pulling back. 'Changing Lanes' asks complex moral questions, but unfortunately the solution which Michell eventually proposes - that we should all be nicer to one another - risks reducing this complexity to a pat banality. Really it's Gavin's depraved father-in-law, played by Sydney Pollack, who should have the last word on this film: 'Hey, who the fuck gives a shit about the struggles of your character?' Who indeed?

Anton Bitel, 7.11.02