The greatest virtue of “Changing Lanes”, a wonderful, tightly written morality tale, is its refusal to stop posing difficult questions. Not two competing sides of a single moral dilemma, but the endless mutability of morality itself is captured by the film’s deftly balanced script. The suspense is built nicely in the first few minutes, but whereas most filmmakers would wind up their alienated men, lost amid the gears and pulleys of a pitiless society, and then let them march through their paces toward a dead, ‘action-packed’ finale, writers Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin, and director Roger Michell, continually force each of their characters to reassess his own point of view about his chaotic day. Gavin’s attempt to make sense of what’s happening to him is deeply informed by his partner, his mistress, his wife, a priest, and finally Doyle; meanwhile, Doyle has his own set of moral mirrors, the most reflective being his wife. All these are truly reflections, for what each man must learn is that he has, in a very real sense, precipitated the series of ostensibly anomalous events which threaten to capsize his life.
Affleck’s Gavin is appropriately heavy-lidded for a disillusioned New York power broker, the best of his kind since Charlie Sheen’s scrappy turn in “Wall Street”, and Jackson brings out the opposing poles of his personality, rage and vulnerability, in a performance akin to a slow simmer. The script is never trite (except for a brutally ham-handed scene in a church) and manages to remain one step ahead of us, continually frustrating our easy evaluations of these bewildered searchers. Though at first they seem to occupy opposing moral positions, we find that Gavin is capable of goodness just as Doyle occasionally skirts the edges of evil. The film has no interest in putting forth what is “good” or “just”, but attempts to place these questions into their proper sphere, the reasoning self. Ultimately Gavin and Doyle must learn that appropriate moral responses should remain independent of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Artistically playing on the allegorical figure of freeway traffic, the moral dilemmas which the characters eventually unspool reveal flux, not finality. That’s a subtlety unheard of in Hollywood movies, and “Changing Lanes” deserves special praise for exploring the complexity of morality with such courageousness, inventiveness, and intelligence. |
