Changing Lanes (2002)

Changing Lanes arrives from 2002, a year when a studio thriller could still put two men in a car crash and call it a moral inquiry. Ben Affleck plays Gavin Banek, a Wall Street attorney with a forged document in his briefcase. Samuel L. Jackson plays Doyle Gipson, a recovering alcoholic insurance salesman trying to keep custody of his sons. A fender-bender on the FDR Drive turns them into mutual saboteurs for ninety minutes. Roger Michell directs with the grim efficiency of a man who knows the audience came for the escalation and will tolerate the sermon if it stays brief.

The social content is present but muted. Jackson's casting gives the story an implicit racial and class charge, the white lawyer with the blank check against the Black salesman who wants to do things properly, though the screenplay never names race and treats the whole feud as personal. The corporate villainy is real: a law firm that forges a dead man's signature, a hacker who ruins a credit rating for cash, a senior partner played by Sydney Pollack with practiced contempt. This is an indictment of individual rot, not a systemic howl. Toni Collette and Amanda Peet appear in supporting roles and are given very little to do.

The absences are more telling than the presences. There is no romantic subplot worth the name, no identity politics, no environmental sermon, no lecture delivered to camera. The ethical dilemmas arrive through plot mechanics, which is the older and quieter way of making a point. Doyle's alcoholism is a character flaw, not a diagnosis. We are left with a competent, well-acted thriller that asks whether a man can be decent after he has already been terrible, and answers yes, with a handshake. A modest vintage. Drinkable, unremarkable, faintly dusty.