Everybody's a critic - 'Changing Lanes'

HHH 1/2

"Changing Lanes" is the tale of two grown men who, after colliding cars, drastically affect each other's fates and escalate in anger to an eye-for-an-eye battle.

Colin Powell should hold a screening of the film with the Palestinian and Israeli diplomats in the Mideast. Vengeance is an awful game, and this film is a great microcosm of what happens grand scale in violent world conflicts from Ireland to Kosovo to the streets of Compton.

Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck are perfect in their roles as the recovering alcoholic trying to win back his family and the Wall Street lawyer searching for his lost morality, respectively. The film could have ended in full-scale pain and pyrotechnics; instead, the story rounds out in calm revelation with both men emerging through the fire to a higher sense of self.

"Changing Lanes" is an entertaining and enlightening story that might shame us all into turning the other cheek.

- Fawna Jones, mom