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rating)
Viewed at Kent 6
Rated R; running time of 100 minutes
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Written by: Chap Taylor, Michael Tolkin
Directed by: Roger Michell
Cast: Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Sydney Pollack, Toni Collette, Kim Staunton, William Hurt, Amanda Peet, Dylan Baker
WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW.
The Digest
Doyle Gibson (Samuel Jackson) and Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) are having a very bad day. Doyle is rushing to the courthouse to save his marriage. His wife is divorcing him and moving to Oregon. He is a recovering alcoholic, but drunk or sober he has an explosive temper and she's fed up. He knows this and is trying to do better. He has been sober for months and has just left the bank with approved loan papers for a "fixer-up". Meanwhile across town, Gavin is also rushing to court. Gavin is a lawyer at a hoity toity firm that is representing the will of a rich client. The client, at the last minute, took away control of his estate and foundation from the board, which included his granddaughter, and gave it to the firm. Gavin has to produce signed documents to this effect.
As Gavin and Doyle try to merge onto the same off ramp, Gavin is cut off and in turn cuts Doyle off and causes him to crash. Even though Doyle is prone to outbursts, he remains calm and since he is an insurance man, Doyle knows the rules and he wants to do everything right.
He wants to trade insurance info and whatnot, but Gavin is in a rush and just wants to pay
Doyle off. Doyle doesn't want Gavin's blank check, he is insistent on doing it properly.
Gavin in frustration takes off. In the confusion, Gavin takes the blank check back and
leaves the file he needs to present to court. He speeds off, wishing Doyle "better luck
next time" after Doyle requests a ride into the city.
The causes Doyle to miss his hearing and stop his wife from leaving with the boys, so it's understandable that Doyle is not exactly charitable when Gavin tracks him down and asks for the file back. Doyle won't give it to him, so Gavin tries to force him to by shutting off his credit - which of course means that Doyle can't get the house and with that, war has begun. The question is how far are the willing to take it?
The Dish
I really disliked this story, but I really liked those two characters. Does that make
sense? I'm not sure how I can walk away loving Doyle and Gavin, but hating the story of
which they are an integral part. Samuel Jackson was superb. It was almost as if he had been
Doyle in his own life. Doyle's life is being held together by loose threads that are
unraveling with each passing moment and he just doesn't have the coping skills anymore. He used to get drunk or just lose his temper and he knows if he does either of those things, his life is really going into the crapper and there is no way in hell he will get his family back. Ben Affleck even managed to make me feel sorry for Gavin. He really is just as messed up and confused as Doyle. Gavin has to face the fact that he can't have the woman he wants because he is married to the firm in more ways than one. He is a partner in his father in law's firm, yet he is in love with someone other than his wife. He also has to face the fact that neither he nor the firm has the integrity he thought and he isn't sure when he lost his or how he lost it. Nor is he sure that he can be the lawyer he needs to be in order to survive in the firm. He has lost himself and oddly, this war with Doyle is helping him find himself.
The supporting cast was also wonderful. Kim Staunton was brilliant as Doyle's wife. She was a woman at the end of her rope. She was first and foremost a mother trying to do right by her children and secondly a woman with a broken heart. She still loves Doyle very much and it is killing her to leave him. She's not leaving him because he beat her during one of his drunken binges, and she knows that he is sober, but his temper disrupts her life too much. "It is always something" with Doyle and she wants peace, quiet, and no drama. Amanda Peet was on screen maybe 3 minutes, but her scene was gripping and intense. She is Gavin's wife and they have a powerful exchange over dinner. An exchange that starts to put things in perspective for Gavin. Sidney Pollock was riveting as the managing partner and Gavin’s father in law. And finally, I was also very impressed with Toni Collette's turn as Michelle - the lawyer at work who Gavin is in love with. She tries to keep him grounded and focused and you can tell by the look in her eyes, that she would give anything to be able to shout from the mountaintops that she loves Gavin, but she can't and that is her pain to deal with.
So why didn't I love Lanes? Part of the reason I think is because I'm still smarting
from the bait and switch of the trailers. I went in wanted something along the lines of
The War of the Roses. A tit for a tat and each one escalating to a point where there is an explosive ending. I wanted car chases and police action. I didn't get that and I never
really recovered from that. I wasn't expecting a character study. Then as the movie
progressed and some shady law practicing was revealed, I was hoping that Gavin would enlist help from Doyle and the bad guys would go down in flames. Never happened. And something just clicked in my head and I know what the problem was for me - good guy vs. bad guy. Gavin is the one who is portrayed as the bad guy, but he never really is that bad and then the writers threw in some bad guys and they never really get their just desserts. I felt betrayed. The writers reveal bad guys half way through the movie then leave them as loose ends.
The Directive
I'd love to give this a green light for the acting alone, but sadly I can't. Lanes is closer to a "film" than to a "movie". You know what I mean? It's a
decent date movie, but catch a matinee.
I took an early exit.
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Copyright Kamal "The Diva" Larsuel-Ulbricht, 2002
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