One Hell of A Day
In Changing Lanes, Samuel L. Jackson is Doyle, a recovering alcoholic who is trying to keep his wife from taking custody of his two young sons and leaving New York for a new start away from him in Oregon. Meanwhile, Ben Affleck is Gavin, a young and confident lawyer, working for his father-in-law in a very upscale law firm. One morning, both men are headed to a courthouse in New York — Doyle to partake in a custody hearing, and Gavin to defend his firm’s hold on a hundred million dollar trust foundation. The two manage to bump into one another while on the freeway and the drama only thickens from there.
Gavin accidentally leaves behind a very important file pertaining to his court case, which Doyle picks up, but only after Gavin left Doyle without a ride (his tire blew out). Neither one knows that the other is trying to get to the courthouse, and both end up being late for their court hearings, although in Gavin’s case his biggest problem is not having the file he left at the accident site. Doyle on the other hand is too late for his hearing and he has lost his custody battle.
For most of the film, the two plot more and more harmful things against one another as payback. Gavin pays a hacker to disrupt Doyle’s credit so that a house loan he was getting to close falls through. Doyle meanwhile continues to hold the file that Gavin so desperately wants to keep not only his job, but to also keep himself and father-in-law out of prison as that document is the key to winning the court case and avoid being sued.
The events of the film take place during the course of one day and the pace is excellent throughout. It’s a thoroughly entertaining film that doesn’t over stay its welcome and it ends really well. I don’t think I’ll watch Changing Lanes very often because it is such a powerful drama that is largely driven by suspense (which for most such films weakens the more you watch them), but this is a heck of a “one-timer” movie.
Merging Onto Blu-ray
The Blu-ray version of Changing Lanes impresses in terms of its presentation quality. A simple, static menu with your basic four choices appears (Play, Scenes, Setup, Extras) to start with, but then you are treated to a very nice picture quality throughout the duration of the movie. The contrasts were vibrant, skin tones were very detailed, and frankly everything looked very crisp — basically what you would hope for from a recent film transferred to HD. As for audio, Paramount includes its typical Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track, which does very well for itself in this dialogue driven film.
For extra features, it’s not a very exciting offering. The extra features are:
-Audio Commentary with Director Robert Mitchell
-Making Of – A fifteen minute, SD making of feature, filmed several years ago, probably for the original DVD release. Includes production footage and cast and crew interviews.
-The Writer’s Perspective – A six and a half minute SD feature with interviews from some of the crew, including the Screenwriter.
-Deleted / Extended Scenes – There are two deleted scenes that add five minutes of content, and then one extended scene giving you an additional four and a half minutes. Both are in SD.
-Trailer – The Trailer is presented in HD.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
