Reviewed 3 Dec 2002        Lately, when the King's Anthem is over, and you sit down at last to watch the featured movie, you rarely have high expectations; Hollywood is almost entirely incapable of producing an original film.   One suspects the studios are forced into a production line situation where they must produce so many films each year, and are short of writing talent, so they use the same basic plots over and over.   Worse, yet you can therefore "guess" the ending.   But CHANGING LANES is just that exception to the rule you are hoping against hope to see.   The story is about a lawyer, Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck), and an insurance salesman, Doyle Gipson (Samuel L Jackson), who get in a minor fender-bender going into work in the morning.   Both are on their way to court, but for entirely unrelated, entirely urgent reasons.  
       The unique story and action are the result of extreme, but not improbable reactions of the two protagonists at the site of the accident and thereafter.   While in every day situations, both are upstanding, law-and-order guys, extreme conditions push both to the brink.   Their ethics and law-abiding ways are tested from both ends to the middle, and each finds himself lacking in the exchange.
       In the final analysis, CHANGING LANES is a moral tale where right prevails perhaps just a little too much, like, say, in a Hollywood fairy-tale world, but nevertheless, within bounds.   Good acting all around; the role role of Doyle's "Sponsor" handled deftly by William Hurt. The photography is even better.   CHANGING LANES is one of the few films to come to Bangkok in the last 6 months that's worth going out of your way to see.
      Enduring Line or Phrase:  "You are addicted to chaos..."

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