“God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change.” This statement (or some variation of it) should be familiar to those who have ever walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It’s also supposed to be the lesson learned by Samuel L. Jackson’s insurance salesman character, Doyle, in CHANGING LANES. He’s an alcoholic, yes, but so many other aspects of his life are ripped from his control to the point where he’s not sure he has the ability, let alone the will, to change any of the horrible things happening to him. His nightmare of a day begins as he’s racing on the FDR in New York trying to get to family court where his estranged wife and two children await a judge’s custody decision. He is cut off and forced from the road by a young lawyer (Ben Affleck) named Gavin, who is also headed to court to file some papers that will get him and his firm (headed by his father-in-law, played perfectly by Sydney Pollack) in major-league trouble if they don’t make it into a judge’s hands by 5 p.m. that day. Doyle’s car is wrecked; Gavin attempts to make good for the damage by writing Doyle a blank check, but Doyle wants to do things write and spend valuable time exchanging insurance cards, etc. Gavin loses patience with him and leaves the scene exclaiming, “Better luck next time.” (The irony of the situation is that both men were headed to the same courthouse.)

It isn’t long before the extremely frustrated Doyle finds a file that Gavin has left behind on the rain-soaked ground. You guessed it: it’s the exact file that will keep Gavin and his partners out of jail. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game between the two men that results in everybody learning a few things about human nature, bad tempers, forgiveness, and the ability to accept things you cannot change.

HUMAN NATURE boils down to a couple of simple points. The material is weak. Almost nothing Ben Affleck does to get his file back makes sense. Soon after his court appearance, when he realizes his file is missing, he spots Doyle walking on the sidewalk. Once Doyle tells him that he’s thrown the file away, Gavin lets him go without even asking him WHERE he threw it away. I’m sorry but if I was Gavin, I wouldn’t have let Doyle out of my sight if I was lucky enough to find him in the middle of New York City. Rather than track the man down at his home or job, Gavin heads to a shady fix-it man (Dylan Baker), who ruins Doyle’s bank account records and credit report. Doyle has just been approved for a home loan that morning for a house he’s hoping he can convince his wife and kids to move into, but when he returns to the bank after the disastrous court date, his loan officer rejects him.

I’m not even going to quibble about the lengths these two men go to to hurt each other. Gavin is still after his file; Doyle wants something a little less tangible. He wants a second change, a few minutes of his life back, his wife to forgive him for being late to court, something good to happen to him. Of course, we’re served up the obligatory shot in a bar of Doyle staring down a glass filled with bourbon. Does he drink it? I wonder. Amanda Peet, whose talents as an actress are still unproven to me, does a pretty good job here in only two scenes playing Gavin’s wife and Pollack’s daughter. She tries to convince Gavin there are other, more dishonest ways of refiling the correct paperwork, but Gavin becomes obsessed with retrieving the original file.

Jackson, not surprisingly, does a great job of adding a lot more humanity to his character than was probably written in the script. He is not playing the bad mutha he usually does on film. Doyle is basically a wimp pushed to extremes by a life crumbling before his eyes. He reminded me a bit of Michael Douglas in FALLING DOWN, but not quite so crazy (but close). Affleck’s Gavin character is more cookie cutter lawyer type. He’s driven to succeed, to win any way he can, even if it means pushing people around who are weaker than him. Toni Collette (THE SIXTH SENSE) is also on hand (although utterly wasted) as another lawyer at Gavin’s firm who has a history with him.

Aside from the film’s fatal flaw of trying to make us feel sympathy for a lawyer and an insurance salesman (who does his business over the phone, no less), the movie also totally drops the ball on the one potential life lesson it offers (re-read the first sentence in this review to job your memory). I’ll try not to spoil anything here, but at the exact moment Doyle accepts that his life is the way it is and that he may lose his family because of the day’s events, something happens that makes his life lesson null and void. And about all Gavin learns is that he should be nicer to strangers in the future. Duh! I wish God had given me the strength to change the end of this movie. CHANGING LANES is a classic case of good people doing the best they can in a mediocre film. Sam Jackson fans should start lining up now; otherwise, save your money.

ENIGMA

Although kept from American audiences for well over a year, ENIGMA is worth the wait. It’s a film that treats its audience with respect and intelligence, and it portrays WWII as not only a battle of fire power but a mind game played on a global scale.

Dougray Scott (probably best known in this country as the villain in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2) is Tom Jericho, a master cryptoanalysts for Britain, a man who not only breaks codes but also takes educated guesses at what they mean in the grand scheme of the war. As the film opens, Tom is returning to work after a mini-nervous breakdown triggered by a failed love affair with a coworker (Saffron Burrows as Claire). Just when Tom returns, Claire goes missing from work and the British secret service (represented brilliantly by GOSFORD PARK’s Jeremy Northam) are called in to investigate the possibility that Claire was a spy. A very frumpy looking Kate Winslet (who was pregnant while filming) is Claire’s roommate, Hester, who befriends Tom as they try to find out just who Claire was and what she was doing with stolen transcripts of intercepted German transmissions.

I haven’t got the slightest if any of the story of ENIGMA is based on fact and, frankly, I don’t care. It’s a masterfully complex plot (screenplay by Tom Stoppard based on Robert Harris’ book) that is executed with great precision by director Michael Apted (who gave us the last Bond film, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH). For those who are in any way familiar with the story of the Enigma machine taken from the Germans and used to decode their messages and help the Allied forces win the war, this ain’t that story. The British code breakers are dealing with an even more complex version of Enigma here and must break the code before a major offensive is launched by German u-boats against Allied ships in the Atlantic. There are more double and triple crosses than I care to mention but none of it feels excessive or tiresome. This is a perfect film for those who are sick of having even the most obvious plot devices spoon fed into their brains. Scott is perfect as the almost mad genius whom his fellow code breakers look at as if expecting him to burst into tears at any minute. Northam is the comic relief in the film, but he clearly relishes the role of the man you don’t know whether to love, hate, trust, or assume every word out of his mouth is the boldest of lies. It occurred to me while watching ENIGMA that code breakers were kind of the computer geeks of their era; embrace your past faithful readers.

BETTER LUCK TOMORROW

I spent a special evening last Friday with the director and entire main cast of BETTER LUCK TOMORROW. The film was being screened as part of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Asian American Showcase, and I’m glad I made the trip to see it. Harry and a few others have covered this film during its appearances at Sundance and SXSW, so I won’t bore you with the details. But I will say this is an vital and important film, and not just because it’s one of the only films in recent memory made with Asian-American actors in all of the lead roles, an Asian-American director, and a story that in many ways bends and breaks the stereotypes about Asian-American teenagers.

The story centers on Ben, a perfectionist among perfectionists. His friends consist of the smartest kids in his high school. They don’t need to cheat to get good grades; they’re the ones people cheat off of. If BETTER LUCK TOMORROW teaches us anything, it shows us that just because a group of kids be the smartest in school doesn’t mean they aren’t just as devious and capable of violence as anybody else. Perhaps their smarts makes them better criminals and less likely to get caught. Ben and his friends become the most feared group in their school. They party hard and study harder. Perhaps the reason BLT (as the filmmakers call it) is so scary is that it’s not a story of good kids who let their grades slip and home lives go to hell because of drugs or other deviant behavior. These kids suffer almost no repercussions as a result of their behavior. Director and co-writer Justin Lin has put some real punch into his film that may leave you a little queasy during the last 15 minutes or so. It’s strange to see characters who are somewhat redeemed by the end but not because they’ve endured a tremendous loss in the final act of the story. They simply lose interest in the thug life.

BLT is not about prejudice against Asian Americans; it’s not trying to deliver a moral to the story, or examine to gulf between teenagers and parent (not a single parent is even shown on screen, which is perhaps the most shocking aspect of the film). Lin’s story shows us that it’s not just poor white trash that rise up against authority; it’s anyone who feels isolated from the rest of the world. This movie won’t blow you through the back of the theatre, but it will make you think.

Capone