Sugar and spice

People can be sweet as pie or as nasty as rusty nails given the circumstances of their day. We all have our good and bad days. They are often determined by events throughout the day but what if the ingredients for a sweet pie are left to spoil for days, months, or years? Some people seem to have spoiled ingredients right from the start. Poor Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) makes you ponder this question (among others) in the new film "Changing Lanes." Is life what you make of it or does life make of you what it will?

Characters Doyle Gipson and Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) just can’t figure it out. I enjoyed Roger Michell’s expose of these only too human men. On Good Friday (a bit cheesy if you ask me), Gavin and Doyle question if there’s a destiny for us all or if we’re all floating around aimlessly bumping into one another and screwing up each other’s lives. "Changing Lanes" is the story of two men who one day collide and affirm to each other that life is sometimes unfair, you can’t always right your wrongs, bad luck is a fact of life, blame has to fall somewhere, pain is a part of life and so on and so forth. The moral of the story is that the best way to deal with life, is to be the best you can be every day and that includes not only what’s best for you but also for others (perhaps this is a new concept for those in Hollywood).

This isn’t ground-breaking but I enjoyed the far-fetched methods used by Doyle and Gavin to cope with their very bad day. By no means is this film a thriller or a blood and guts revenge plot like the trailer implies. The film looks good, incorporating cool editing and soft focus. More importantly, it has a great cast including Sydney Pollack, Amanda Peet, William Hurt and Toni Colette (of "Muriel’s Wedding," who it was particularly nice to see again).

Lastly, it’s always a blast to see Samuel L. Jackson getting all hot and bothered; he even smacks a few guys in the head with a pay phone receiver. Ben Affleck carries his weight as a spoiled ass with half a conscience (surprising that his character is a lawyer). I also appreciated that it only sucked 100 minutes of my life from me.