A gem of a movie hiding there in the shelves. After seeing the movie I truly could not understand why this movie did not make a splash. I never even heard of it until I saw it at the rentals. The movie basically has Ben Affleck playing a hotshot lawyer who on his way to a very important court case has a small accident with Samuel L Jackson who was on his way to the court as well to appear for his child custody case. Ben offers a blank check to Samuel citing he has to be some place and thus does not have the time to check and share insurance information. When Samuel does not accept the blank check and says he wants to do this the right way, Ben leaves the scene leaving Sam stranded without a ride. Samuel cries out to Ben for a ride and not to leave him there stranded. Ben disregards this and is off. Back at the court, Ben realises when he is arguing the case, that he can't produce a very important document (a power of appointment) given by a deceased client of the firm which gave Ben's law firm the power to be trustees and caretaker of the money left behind by the deceased guy. He realises he must have dropped it at the accident site (which Sam has picked up as good samaritan despite the harsh treatment he was given by Ben Affleck). Sam, due to the accident delay and due to not getting a timely ride to the court reaches late and as a result looses his right to say his piece before the judge and looses custody of the children. Ben then tries to get the power of appointment from Samuel. Being enraged on Ben for stranding him and thereby making him loose his childeren's custody, he refuses to return the document that Ben needs. Ben then uses the services of a guy who does network hacking jobs and gets Samuel's credit turned off. Sam thus gets refused a loan which he needed desperately to buy a house with, to persuade his estranged wife to live with him so he can be close to the childeren. Samuel now gets further enraged and then makes it a mission to make life tough for Ben. Samuel tears up certain parts of power of appointment, threatens to destroy the book if the credit is not turned on. Ben tries to get it turned back but the hacker guy is not able to reverse it, Samuel is further enraged and sabotages Ben's car by loosening the wheels. Ben nearly gets killed. This draws a response from Ben. Ben then calls Samuel Saying his boys have been kidnapped while informing the School that an unstable man will try to run away with this childern. A Distraught Samuel goes to the School in concern for his children which is misread by the School as a father who is trying to kidnap his children. So right from the accident, it's a case of Ben and Sam one-upping each other and trying to view the other with harmful intent and each end up doing things that they would otherwise normally not do. It basically showcases the depths to which a normal noble law abiding logical person can sink to and how easily in a second he can chose to give up the very moral fibre by which he lived his life all along and how this can be brought about by a single seemingly unimportant incident which can have meaningful negative consequences for a person. This is a film about the fine line that we tread between leading our lives with the moral code or making an exception and sometimes doing the immoral thing. I believe each of us who see this movie can relate to this movie because no one can claim to be saint. We all in our past, be it small instances and incidences, have made some choices which we saw as right and just and correct in the heat of the moment but when the spite and anger over the situation passes we find ourselves questioning our very own actions which we thought were justifiable and correct beyond a shadow of doubt at an earlier point in time.



regards, Vikram