Salt Lake Tribune Review
The problem with “Derailed” is that everything turns on a single plot point - and the whole enterprise falls apart if it's too easy to guess what will happen at that plot point.
When that happens in this glossy but preposterous thriller, the movie becomes a tedious exercise in waiting for the dim-bulb hero to figure out what the rest of us already know.
The idiot in question is Charles (
Clive Owen), a Chicago ad-agency exec feeling that his two-career marriage to Deanna (
Melissa George) has been strained by job schedules and the costs of caring for their 14-year-old diabetic daughter, Amy (Addison Timlin). On the train to work one day, he meets Lucinda (
Jennifer Aniston) and is immediately attracted. Though neither has ever strayed before (Lucinda tells Charles she's also married with a daughter), they soon are checking into a semi-seedy hotel - where a robber (
Vincent Cassel) busts in, robs Charles and rapes Lucinda.
The robber, a Frenchman named LaRoche, threatens to tell Deanna of the affair if Charles doesn't pay him. The only money Charles has, though, is the savings he and Deanna have set aside for Amy's kidney transplant.
The script, adapted from a
James Siegel novel by
Stuart Beattie (“Collateral”), sticks Charles out on a limb, unable to trust his wife or the cops or even Lucinda, as he tries to outmaneuver the cagey LaRoche. Charles, however, is only slightly smarter than a tree stump, and watching him enter a battle of wits unarmed isn't much fun for the audience.
Swedish director Mikael Håfstršm papers over the script's more ridiculous coincidences by creating a glossy look and highlighting Aniston's stilletto-heeled sexiness. Aniston is the reason to watch, as she puts behind her “Friends” persona with this edgy
femme fatale role. Now all she has to do is put “Derailed” behind her.
The rundown: Jennifer Aniston as a
femme fatale? That's not as hard to swallow as some things in this thriller.
Synopsis: Advertising executive Charles Schine is just another Chicago commuter who regularly catches the 8:43 A.M. train to work. But the one day he misses his train and meets Lucinda Harris, his life is changed forever. Lucinda is charming, beautiful and seductive. Despite the fact that each are married with children, their attraction to one another is magnetic. Lunch dates quickly become cocktails after work, and before long, Charles and Lucinda's infatuation leads them to a hotel room. Their seemingly perfect affair goes terribly awry when LaRoche, a brutal stranger, breaks into their room and holds them at gunpoint. This once illicit liaison turns into a nightmare more dangerous and violent than either could have ever imagined. Charles' life soon becomes filled with deception, blackmail, violence and crime. Unable to confide in his wife or speak to the police, Charles finds himself trapped in a world he doesn't recognize, with no trace of the life he once knew.
