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2002 Paramount Pictures
Directed by Roger Michell
Writing credits: Chap Taylor (story/screenplay)
Ben Affleck .... Gavin Banek
Samuel L. Jackson .... Doyle Gipson
Rated R for language
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This fast moving, gritty thriller charts a single day in the lives of two men whose (very different) worlds collide, after a minor car crash, which has major repercussions for them both.
Clip One: A Fateful Collision
Doyle Gibson (played by Samuel L Jackson) is a recovering alcoholic who is desperately trying to secure a mortgage in the hope that he can keep his family together. He’s driving to a family court hearing, with no time to lose, and he’s rehearsing his lines. He’s decided defend himself in court. “Boys need their fathers,” he says to the imaginary judge, then starts writing the phrase down on an envelope on the passenger seat. His car swerves a little.
Meanwhile, Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) is a Wall-Street lawyer who’s also heading for court, and is also cutting it fine. Banek is not concentrating on his driving either, looking up at the signs to see which route to take. As he tries to change lanes, he hits Gibson’s car, which crumples into rubbish bins in the central reservation, seriously damaged. Banek’s car is only scratched.
Fate could not have brought together two more different people. When their cars collide, we see their different approaches to life straight away. They are both in a rush, but while Gibson wants to see Banek’s insurance card so that he can do things by the book. Banek, on the other hand, wants to follow the route of expedience, and tries to fob Gibson off with a blank cheque for the repairs. Gibson protests, “I have to do this right, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I think so...” replies Banek, as he receives a call from his secretary telling him he’s late and the court is in session.
“Tell them I’m on the steps,” he says. And he drives off, shouting “Better luck next time!” to Gibson who is stranded on the freeway with no chance of making his own court hearing on time. Gibson’s hope of keeping his family together is disappearing before his eyes; in the end, he will arrive at court just in time to hear the judge award sole custody of his two children to his wife. But as he stands forlornly in the central reservation, Gibson looks down at the ground and sees that, in the rush, Banek has dropped a red file.
A Bitter Contest of Wills
The incident not only thwart’s Gibson; it also leaves Banek high and dry. The red file is, in fact, a crucial ‘power of appointment’ that gives Banek’s senior partners control of a $107million trust fund. A dying philanthropist called Simon Dunn had signed control of his estate over to Banek and his partners – to the annoyance of the Dunn family, who are contesting the matter in court. Banek had manipulated the man on his deathbed, in an attempt to bring a lucrative deal to the law firm that recently made him a partner. But the only document that proves Banek’s case is now in Gibson’s hands; he only finds that he doesn’t have it when he is in court, in front of the judge.
The judge gives him the rest of the day to produce it – otherwise the consequences will be disastrous for Banek. Without the document, Banek is in very big trouble with these senior partners, especially as one of them, Delano (Stephen Pollack) is his father-in-law. He will also be in big trouble with the courts, and could end up without a job and in jail. He has to retrieve the file from the man he has just left high and dry. The man to whom he wished “Better luck next time!”
The stage is set for a bitter contest of wills between the two men, as they struggle to right the wrongs and settle the scores of the car crash. Both are driven to the very edge of themselves, with each man willing to stop at almost nothing to thwart the other’s intentions.
By chance, Banek catches sight of Gibson walking down the street and tries to persuade him to return the file. But Gibson reminds Banek of his words on the freeway: “You said better luck next time. I need you to give my time back to me. Can you give me my morning back?” Banek pleads with him for the file; but Gibson has thrown it away.
Back at his office, Banek despairs as to know what to do regarding Gibson and the file. His colleague Michelle (Toni Collette) reminds him of how he came by the file in the very first place. She acts, in some sense, as his conscience: “Did you really think it was right to convince a dying man to sign a power of appointment?” she asks.
Banek begs her for help. “There’s this guy,” she says. “This guy who helps out with things that need helping out with.” Banek is torn. He desperately needs the file, but at the same time he is reluctant to engage in all-out war with Gibson. “Do you want what’s right?”, Michelle asks. “Yes,” he replies.
Wanting to do the Right Thing
Banek is struggling to know ‘what is right’. Is it right to put his own life, his own job and his own wife first and ruin someone else’s life in the process, or to own up to his boss and face the consequences?
While Banek struggles with this dilemma, Gibson has a change of heart and, having retrieved the file from the bin he dumped it in, requests an envelope from a work colleague to courier the file to Banek. “Is there a reward or something?” the colleague asks. “Doing the right thing,” he replies. “That’s the reward.” His colleague is surprised. “Well, how about that?”
From the moment of the accident, Gibson has wanted to do the right thing: to exchange the right insurance documents, and now, even, to return the file to the man who has ruined his day and, by consequence, his life. But a threatening voicemail from Banek puts paid to his good intentions.
Gibson’s wife has threatened to take his children to Oregon, which seems to him like the other side of the world. Effectively, it means he won’t be able to see his children. His last hope to at least keep his family in the area is to buy them a house – settle them in. He might even, one day, be able to move back in with them. Having found a house and arranged a loan, the bank calls him back in to say that there has been a mistake - that his name is blacklisted. They can’t therefore give him a loan, and he can’t buy the house.
Banek has fixed it so that the one thing Gibson hoped might save his marriage is destroyed - securing a mortgage to buy a house. He displays his anger and bitterness as he goes in search of tools in a hardware store in order to tamper with Banek’s car.
Later, Banek receives a fax of the ‘power of appointment’ with ‘Better luck next time!’ scrawled across it. It’s from Gibson. Banek begins to grow disillusioned when he discovers that his senior partners have helped themselves to millions of dollars from the Dunn Foundation, and that he, as Dunn’s attorney, is implicated.
Then, to top off his morning, a tense lunch meeting with his wife reveals that she knew all about an affair he conducted at work long before it ended. She also knows that the senior partners want to forge the missing document, and she presses him to do what they say. She seems less concerned with what is right, and more about what is expedient.
Gibson then phones to say that his credit’s back on and he’ll return the document. But just as things appear to be coming together for Banek, they fall apart again. Gibson has tampered with his car in revenge for blocking his loan, and the car spins out of control as he is speeding down the highway.
Revenge is not Sweet
Scared and shaken, Banek scrambles out and walks along the road – to where Gibson’s crumpled Daihatsu is sitting - where it crashed - in the rain. He is back where he started the day: standing on the freeway, only this time he is the one without a car. And he’s back where he started regarding the document, too. Gibson still has it, and the clock is ticking.
Banek then gets even in a cruel act of revenge involving Gibson’s children. He makes a hoax call to warn their school that Gibson is going to kidnap them, following the custody ruling. He then calls Gibson’s office and leaves a message, saying that there has been an accident at the school: when Gibson turns up demanding to see his kids, he is arrested.
As Gibson is led away in a police car, Banek yells: “You see that? I tried to make peace with you. You know who I am? You see what I can do to you? You tried to kill me.” But the scene exposes Banek at his weakest. Despite his boasts, he is undoubtedly the one in the worst position without the file.
He has to shoulder the burden of knowing that he’s ruined Gibson’s life, while trying to sort out his own. And this shouting, this jeering at Gibson masks a deeper insecurity.
Gibson’s sponsor from Alcoholics Anonymous (played by William Hurt) challenges him after paying his bail. “What’s wrong with you? Keep doing the wrong thing and you could start a religion. Everything decent is held together by a covenant, an agreement not to go back to it. You broke the contract.”
“I didn’t have a drink!” Gibson retorts.
“Well wow, thank you for sharing that,” Hurt mocks.
“That’s the point isn’t it?” Gibson asks.
“You know,” Hurt muses, “booze isn’t really your drug of choice anyway… you got hooked on disaster. You’re addicted to chaos.”
Sorry seems to be the Hardest Word
Changing Lanes explores the themes of bitterness, revenge, forgiveness and a distorted sense of right and wrong.
At several points in the film, both Gibson and Banek try to say sorry, but each time they discover how difficult it is to truly forgive someone.
The story goes that an elderly, single woman pre-planned her funeral. The funeral director was intrigued by the fact she chose six female pallbearers. “Are you sure you want all women to carry your casket to the grave,” he asked. "I’m positive, she responded. “If those men wouldn’t take me out when I was alive, I’m not going to let them take me out when I’m dead.’’
How many people’s lives have been destroyed because they were not willing to forgive? ‘Forgiveness’ means to dismiss, to release, to leave or abandon. We might hear of a judge that has ‘dismissed’ charges against a defendant, or a person who is released from an obligation such as a loan or debt.
The Bible contains a passage - in Matthew 18.21-35 – which suggests that a forgiving person will not count how many times they are called to forgive (verses 21-22). Peter asks Jesus, “How often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
In fact, Peter was being generous, as the Jewish people felt that God only wanted them to forgive a person three times. (Their thinking came from the book of Amos, in which God pronounces judgements against the neighbouring nations of Israel. God says that he will revoke his punishment against them three times, not four. The religious teachers wrongly interpreted this to mean they only had to forgive a person three times.)
So, Peter is willing to go the extra mile in saying “seven”. But Jesus responds, “No, seventy times seven.” In other words, set no limits when it comes to forgiving!
We are called to forgive like Jesus has forgiven us. Ephesians 4.32 says, ‘Be kind to each other, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.’ The question is, how many times has Jesus forgiven you? And at what stage, exactly, did Jesus ever say that he would no longer forgive you?
When our children are born, we can’t just say that we’ll give them 28 chances in their life before that’s it. Colossians 3.13 says, ‘Remember the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.’ In fact, when God forgives, he buries our sins and doesn’t mark the grave.
Forgive your Debtors
In the passage in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus proceeds to tell a parable to illustrate what he means. A king starts to call to account all the people who owe him money. He wants them to settle up. One person in particular owes him a very large amount. He is in a hopeless situation, and seeks mercy from the king.
At this point, the man just wants more time so that he can figure out a way to take care of things himself. But he knows he has no way out. He is looking for anything to stall the inevitable.
The king’s response would have surely been enough to end the parable beautifully at this point: ‘The King was filled with compassion for him and he released him and forgave his debt.’
How would you have felt coming away from the king? Imagine you had lost your job and were out of work for six months. The bank phones, and you plead with them for a little more time. Then they tell you, “The £100,000 that you owe on the house has been forgiven you. And by the way, all your other loans and debts have also been written off.”
However, the story doesn’t end there for the servant. As soon as this man leaves the king – forgiven - he goes in search of a man who owes him the equivalent of a couple of month’s wages. The servant wants to find him to show forgiveness, doesn’t he? Sadly, no. Instead, he has the man arrested and thrown into prison.
How many times do we hold on to a grudge because we want the other person to pay their due? A forgiving person will sow what they have received, as it says in Matthew 31-35. Verse 33 is the key: ‘Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’
We must sow the seeds of forgiveness that we have reaped from God. In fact, the only request in the Lord’s Prayer that comes with a condition attached is one about forgiveness (Matthew 6.12): ‘And forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.’
In other words, if we want God to forgive us, we must forgive other people. It is very sad that some people will go through life holding a grudge because they think it somehow hurts the other person - when the blunt truth is, it hurts them instead. Resentment makes us ‘re-feel’ our wounds, while forgiveness heals them.
Forgiveness frees us, while unforgiveness enslaves. It is better to forgive and forget than to resent and remember. To forgive others can be one of the toughest things that Jesus commands us to do, but still he demands it from us, and we must respond.
A mother brought her two arguing children together and insisted they make immediate amends. The siblings hesitantly apologised to each other, but one commented, “I’m apologising on the outside, but I’m not on the inside.” At least he was honest.
Unfortunately, adults tend to go through the motions of forgiveness by covering up their real emotions. True forgiveness doesn’t bury the hatchet while allowing the handle to remain exposed.
Acknowledging our Hurts
So how do we forgive?
First, we must acknowledge that we have been hurt. Sometimes, we might pretend that something didn’t really bother us, but we know that we’re fooling no one, not least ourselves. We must be careful that we don’t try to get rid of our hurt by covering it up - otherwise hurt can so easily turn into hate.
The rule of the world is, ‘Do unto others as they’ve done unto you.’ But when we forgive, we choose to lay aside whatever right we think we have for revenge. When we choose to forgive, we are leaving ultimate justice to God, and we are deliberately choosing for ourselves the path of forgiveness.
Acknowledging that we have been hurt gets us in the right place to begin, but surrendering our right to get even is the first step down the path. Some would argue that choosing such a path means that we are going to end up as a doormat. But a power is released by this decision that cannot come from any other source.
What does such a power look like? Albert Tomei was a justice of the New York State Supreme Court. A young defendant was once convicted in Judge Tomei’s court of gunning down another person in a self-styled ‘execution’. The murderer had a bad record, was no stranger to the system, and only stared in anger as the jury returned its guilty verdict.
The victim’s family had attended every day of the two-week trial. On the day of sentencing, the victim’s mother and grandmother addressed the court. When they spoke, neither addressed the jury. Both spoke directly to the murderer. And they both forgave him.
“You broke the Golden Rule - loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You broke the law - loving your neighbour as yourself. I am your neighbour,” the grandmother told him, “so you have my address. If you want to write, I’ll write you back. I sat in this trial for two weeks, and for the last 16 months I tried to hate you. But you know what? I could not hate. I feel sorry for you because you made a wrong choice.”
Judge Tomei wrote: ‘For the first time since the trial began, the defendant’s eyes lost their laser force and appeared to surrender to a life force that only a mother can generate: nurturing, unconditional love. After the grandmother finished, I looked at the defendant. His head was hanging low. There was no more swagger, no more stare. The destructive and evil forces within him collapsed helplessly before this remarkable display of humanness.’
In choosing the path of forgiveness, the grandmother released a power that could not be tapped in any other way. And it was that power which caused the defendant to hang his head for the first time.
Look for the Real Person beneath the Mask
When we have been wronged, we tend to caricature our wrongdoer; we emphasise all the bad things about them, twisting anything that looks remotely good. We are quick to discredit their every motive, and see them only and always in one way.
Forgiveness requires, however, that we look for the real person behind the caricature we’ve created in our minds. Not only have they hurt, but also they have been hurt. We begin to see that they are weak, needy and fallible. And we can start to find reasons for our hearts to turn towards mercy instead of malice.
This doesn’t mean we automatically grant them victim status and excuse all their wrong – we are forgiving, not excusing.
And what is our motivation for doing this? We are doing for them what God has done for us. God could have simply seen our wrongdoing and said, “I’ve seen enough, that’s all I need to know.” But God looked beyond our wrongdoing and saw something worth loving. And that’s what we’ve been called to do as well.
Desire the Best for your Wrongdoer
It sounds almost impossible to hope for good things to happen to someone who has done bad things to you; but In the process of forgiveness, we move from dreaming of bad things befalling people toward hoping for good things in their life.
At this point, it might be helpful to consider a related question: Does forgiving mean there’s no punishment? The answer is, No, forgiving does not necessarily mean there should not be punishment. If someone remains unrepentant, punishment that leads to sorrow may be the desired option, because it will bring a person closer to where they need to be.
The key, however, is in our motive. Whereas before we might have prayed for them to be punished because of our anger and hatred, we might alternatively pray for them to be punished because we want to see their heart changed. We must seek to desire good things, not bad things, for those who hurt us.
Imagine that a thief breaks into my house and steals most of my belongings. He is caught and put on trial, but is completely lacking remorse. If I go to court and plead for his release, he will immediately return to more burglary.
In that situation, the good things I want for the burglar’s life are a change of heart and a change of lifestyle. As this is most likely to happen through punishment, forgiveness does not keep me from supporting such action - although I might well want to write or visit while they’re in prison, for instance, to try to share the love of God.
When Chris Carrier was ten, he was abducted, stabbed, shot and left for dead. Amazingly, he survived, but the emotional and physical scars were very difficult to heal. Eventually, though, his commitment to Christ helped him to move on with his life. The perpetrator was never found.
Over 20 years later, on September 3, 1996, Chris received a phone call from a detective in the Coral Gables, FL police department. Hee said that an elderly man in a local nursing home had confessed to being his abductor. The man’s name was David McCallister.
Chris visited David the following day, and this is what he said: “It was an awkward moment, walking into his room, but as soon as I saw him I was overwhelmed with compassion. The man I found was not an intimidating kidnapper, but a frail 77-year-old. David’s body was ruined by alcoholism and smoking - he weighed little more than sixty pounds. He had no family, or if he did, they wanted nothing to do with him, and no friends.
“A friend who had accompanied me asked him a few questions that led to him admitting that he had abducted me. He then asked, ‘Did you ever wish you could tell that young boy that you were sorry for what you did?’ David answered emphatically, ‘I wish I could.’ That was when I introduced myself to him.
“Unable to see, David clasped my hand and told me he was sorry for what he had done to me. As he did, I looked down at him, and it came over me like a wave: Why should anyone have to face death without family, friends, and the joy of life - without hope? I couldn’t do anything but offer him my forgiveness and friendship.” In the days that followed, Chris was able to share the love of Christ with David.
What is our motivation for doing such a difficult thing? We are doing for them what God has done for us.
If Possible, enjoy A Healed Relationship
Sometimes the other person can’t join us in moving toward reconciliation (for example, a parent we need to forgive might now have passed away) and sometimes the other person simply won’t join us (such as someone who won’t acknowledge they have hurt us, for instance).
For reconciliation to happen, they must understand the pain that they’ve caused us and be remorseful about it. But when they are, we must make sure that we enjoy the healing and the renewed relationship that can only come through forgiveness.
Back to Changing Lanes.
At the end of the film, Banek asks his father-in-law and senior partner Delano, “How can you live with yourself?” - referring to the way they all handled the Simon Dunn affair. Delano replies, “I can live with myself because, at the end of the day, I think I do more good than harm: what other standard have I got to judge by?” Delano sees morality as a kind of balance sheet of good and evil, a profit-and-loss account where as long as assets outweigh liabilities, you’ve done OK.
When he interviews a prospective associate, Banek finds the man’s ideological approach to the law laughable. “I believe in the law,” he says. “I believe in order and justice. I believe that people are by nature good…” - but he is interrupted by Banek’s laughter. The youngster is wrong. People are by nature corrupt and evil: Banek has seen this firsthand in the events of that day, in himself and Gibson. And the law condemns us: it shows us how we ought to live, but also how we fail to measure up to it.
Clip Two: Changed Lanes, Changed Lives
Gibson is in Banek’s office. He has returned the red file, at the end of a long and traumatic day. “I have to thank you,” says Gibson. Banek has tried – a little too late - to help him buy a house. But his wife has already left him, and taken the children. She’s told him he won’t ever see them again. “But I will,” Gibson declares, with determination. In the meantime, a house seems too much for him right now. “But I’ll find a way to be their father again. What about you?” he asks Banek.
Banek starts thinking aloud. He has the file, but it’s too late for him, too. His senior partners had to act fast to cover their tracks while he was trying to find the file. They forged the document, and now it’s as if ‘it never happened’. So now, he muses, he’s going to go for dinner with his wife and his in-laws, and at the weekend go and look at a boat, and then come back in to work on Monday. “Magically, this whole incredible day somehow becomes a memory,” he says. It’s like meeting a girl in a fleeting moment, who you can’t forget. “After that day, you remember her – not every day, but she comes back to you as a memory of another life you could have had. Today’s that girl,” he reflects.
“I’m sorry about what I did,” he tells Banek. “I’m sorry, too,” Banek replies.
We then see Banek going to the restaurant, where, in an atmosphere you could cut with a knife, he joins his wife and her parents for dinner. Banek and his father-in-law exchange steely glares. But just as the small talk seems to be smoothing over the wrongdoing of the day, Banek whips out the crumpled red file from his pocket. “This is Simon Dunn’s power of appointment,” he says. “I got it back.”
“This is behind us,” his father-in-law speaks through gritted teeth.
“Can you imagine how unpleasant it would be if the judge found this file?” Banek asks. He will not be moved; he will not be dispatched to Texas for a few months, as Delano has suggested, to do some charity ‘pro-bono’ work with poor men on death row. Instead, he has changed. He will stay at the office and stand his ground, and do the pro-bono work from there – starting on Monday by helping a man to buy a house. “I’ve found the edge,” he tells his wife. “Can you live there with me?”
It is only in these closing moments of Changing Lanes that true forgiveness is reached between Banek and Gibson. As a further act of reconciliation, Banek visits Mrs Gibson to explain what happened, and persuades her to give Gibson another chance. The closing shot is of Gibson coming out his apartment and seeing his family waiting for him across the road.
If you want to be a forgiving person, set no limits on forgiveness. Seek the experience of forgiveness in your life through Jesus and sow what you have received from God.
Do not let anger; revenge and grudges destroy your life and the lives of those around you. Give it to Jesus. If you are holding a grudge, release it and ask Jesus to enable you to forgive the person who hurt you.
It’s never too late to change lanes.
