The Path Not Taken

Movies about the evils of greed should always be taken with a grain of salt, not least when they are produced by major studios owned by multinational corporations. Lately Hollywood seems to be genuinely fascinated with how fragile our lives are, and how different they might be if we'd taken the road less (or more) traveled. And in the minds of movie executives, this has always meant imagining life beyond the bottom line.

The first sign that Universal Pictures' "Family Man" is one of these redemptive movies is that it is set on Christmas. A wealthy Wall Street businessman wakes up Christmas morning to find himself in a parallel universe -- real or imagined is never made clear -- where, instead of being single, successful, and stinking rich, he is a tire salesman of modest accomplishments who lives in a New Jersey suburb with his wife and kids. Initially horrified, he learns to like this other life, largely through the agency of his endearing parallel-world wife (Téa Leoni), who is prone to reminding him when he tells her they could have a life people envy, "They already

envy us."

There is nothing subtle about his transformation. Before plunking him down in the midst of snowy suburbia, the film goes out of its way to show that Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) is utterly consumed by wealth. He wears $2000 suits and drives a Ferrari to work, where, as an investment banker, he is overseeing one of the largest mergers in corporate history. As a one-night stand slips back into her dress, Jack is already tuning his tv to the stock market. When he schedules an emergency staff meeting on Christmas Day, Lassiter (Josef Sommer), his boss, smiles approvingly and calls him "a credit to capitalism."

Jack takes the long way to the meeting. Late on Christmas Eve, he intervenes in a convenience-store confrontation, as a gun-toting street punk named Cash (Don Cheadle) tries to claim some lottery winnings. If Cash is not an angel, he's something very much like one, popping up in various personae to test the character of individual humans. Standing on the sidewalk, with the lights in the distance arranged conspicuously in the shape of a cross, Jack offers to help Cash, who cries out, incredulously, "This man thinks I need to be saved, yo!" His eyes glimmering, Cash then hints, cryptically, that Jack is in for the most unusual lesson of his life.

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