Changing Lanes (2002)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Features:

• Running audio commentary by director Michell
  
• The Making of Changing Lanes
  
• A Writer's Perspective Featurette
  
• Deleted Scenes
  
• Extended Scene
  

Gavin Baneck (Affleck) is a new partner in his law firm and just happens to be married to the daughter (Peet) of one of the senior partners in the firm (are you getting the idea that he's pretty well off?). Doyle Gipson (Jackson) is a father desperately trying to get his life back in order, so that he might be able to retain visitation rights to see his children (are you getting the idea that he's not?). An automobile accident brings these two lives together and not for the better. See, Baneck's going to be late for a court date whereby his law firm takes control of some major moulah and Gipson's on his way to a court date to prove that he has straightened out his life. Gipson winds up with a valuable document of Baneck's, but is pissed off that Baneck blew him off and left him stranded on the side of the road late for his court date.

What follows next is a pretty sad version of the "Oh Yeah, Well I'll One Up You" game. I know that this kind of thing happens and it's a believable premise for a story, but the writing here makes it feel forced. It's difficult to tell how much the lead actors and director are at fault here, too. I'm sure it's probably a pretty equal breakdown of the blame, but this movie just didn't really work for me. I got the point way too early on and felt like I was obligated to sit through the rest of it just so they could put the moral button on the movie at the very end. It's just the kind of movie you can see the end coming from the point the opening credits start to roll and I have to say that it was a big let down. And one other thing, why is it that when Samuel L. Jackson is playing a character that's down on his luck, he always seems to be wearing the same pair of dorky glasses? Can anyone explain that to me?

For a Paramount DVD, this one has some seemingly good special features. For starters, it's actually a got a commentary track! And not only that, but it's a good commentary track. One really good piece of information that comes out is that the director went back to the editing room to remove all the shots with the Twin Towers in them after 9/11, but he later thought how stupid it was to act as though they never existed. He only touches on that very briefly at the beginning, but it definitely resonates throughout the rest of his monologue.

Not only that, but on you get a "Making-of" featurette to boot! It's basically just a collection of interviews with the cast and director interspersed with clips from the film. It skims the surface of the film, but when you get right down to it, that's really what these things are meant to do, right? Just don't expect to be blown away by it. There is another featurette that focuses on the writer of the screenplay. This is where you think you would get the details about the characters in the movie, but all you get is a brief surface scan of a couple of the scenes and the characters, but the lack of depth in this seems to emphasize what the film is missing in the first place: life. The extra/deleted scenes don't really give us much insight into the film either. All we get from them is had they not been taken out, it would just be a longer, more boring film.

So, pick this one up as a rental when you see it on the shelf. It's just not worth the purchase, even as an example that Paramount can really put together a decent DVD when they really put their minds into it.