Hey folks, Harry here, we had a review of this flick a couple of months back... Cru has been viewing and reviewing for quite some time here at AICN... There are some spoilers here so watch out, but it still sounds like a movie that is finding itself. Check it out!!!
Hey Harry, Cru Jones here. While waiting to see Waking Life here in NYC over the weekend, I got screening passes to see Changing Lanes, starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson. I was excited to see this cause they shot it outside my apartment overlooking the FDR drive last year, and thought the premise sounded interesting. So I lied my way into the screening and here are my thoughts, non-spoiler, or course.
The basic plot is that Affleck and Jackson play 2 completely different men who get into a fender bender on the FDR. Affleck makes a few crucial mistakes in handling the matter and Jackson takes offense. The two spend the rest of the movie trying to right their lives of everything that went wrong in that short 3 minutes. And believe me, alot went wrong for these characters during that period of time.
It's hard to believe that such a minor event could have such a major impact on one's life, but that's what Changing Lanes is about. Do I think it succeeds? No. Without giving away too much, these men both go through hell due to the incidents put into motion by the car accident, but in the end, I didnt feel like they learned anything. That was my major gripe with the movie. Not its slow pace, horrible music (could be temp, not sure), nor lack of stellar performance. It was the fact that the film wanted to say something and didn't.
In such an early stage (temp titles, credits, not sure about the music) Changing Lanes still has many chances to be saved, but at this stage, I don't forsee much of a future for this film. It's a shame too, the cast is stellar, though everyone is going on auto-pilot. Sydney Pollack, William Hurt, Amanda Peet and a few others that I can't think of off the top of my head must have been draw to the originality in the script, but right now, Changing Lanes is not doing that at all. It's riding that line in the middle between Good and Crap. Only time will tell if we have ourselves a respectful drama or another Affleck-bomb.
Cru Jones
