When two married business executives (Owen and Aniston) having an affair are blackmailed by a violent criminal, the two must turn the tables on him to save their families.
Screenwriter Stuart Beattie has a dump truck. It is a dump truck full of noir cliches.
In Derailed, he motors along the script, stopping occasionally to dump some of his pulpy cargo all over the place: a sassy-but-loveable hooker here, a dark, sooty cityscape there, some hard-boiled dialog, some guns, tilted camera angles, rain-soaked asphalt and even a big leather briefcase full of cash. (Just once, I’d love to see criminals barter with a briefcase full of something that surprises me, like, I don’t know, a bunch of Bea Arthur’s stolen undies or something.)
It’s a clever little movie that, despite its tendency to communicate its twists and turns with a megaphone in the opening credits, still manages to enthrall – largely because of an airtight script and three good performances from Clive Owen (Closer), Vincent Cassel (Ocean’s Twelve) and Jennifer Aniston (Friends).
Adapted from the novel by James Siegel, Derailed plays like an homage to the crusty-city pessimism of old noir flicks like The Lady From Shanghai and The Asphalt Jungle, making some of its more preposterous plot elements stomachable. (Mind you, it is by no means comparable in terms of quality.) This fish-out-of-water thriller isn’t made for close dissection, and Derailed’s Swedish director, Mikael HÃ¥fström, doesn’t really bring anything substantially new to the genre other than Aniston, who many have said is miscast.
But these people watched Friends far too often. If there’s a woman out there capable of seducing even the most satisfied family man, it’s the affable Ms. Aniston, hands down. And in Derailed, as banker Lucinda Harris, she’s got her lasers pointed at Chicago advertising man Charles Schine (Owen). He’s a family man stranded in suburban stasis. His daughter suffers from some sort of super-diabetes that requires expensive treatment and drugs. He has a beautiful stay-at-home wife.
Then he meets Lucinda on the train to work. She’s intelligent. She’s beautiful. She’s easy to talk to. She’s also married. Next thing they know, they’re throwing back shots at a bar after work, and minutes later they’re in a cheap hotel room, tearing off each other’s clothing.
Enter: Philippe Laroche (Cassel), an armed French gangster, who bursts into the hotel room, demanding money and Lucinda, whom he rapes while Charles lies nearly unconscious on the ground after being pistol-whipped.
Hence, our two main characters, Lucinda and Charles, who met on a train have (TA DA!) derailed. Clever.
Cassel plays Laroche wonderfully as an smooth-yet-brutal shapeshifter. He can transition from a pistol-toting gangster (rapper Xzibit is Dexter, his partner in crime) into a high-falutin’ French businessman who comes over to Charles’s home one evening for tea, charming Charles’s wife while threatening Charles in secret. Laroche’s character is perhaps the most likeable element in Derailed.
HÃ¥fström continues the current Hollywood let’s-get-this-rapper-into-drama trend, also casting RZA, who admirably takes on a supporting role as Winston Boyko, an ex-con who works in the lower rungs of Charles’s advertising firm. Winston gives Charles advice on dealing with the criminal underworld and even helps him plot against Laroche after he repeatedly demands more cash from Charles. Problem is, the cash is running out, and the Schine family needs it to pay for their daughter’s diabetes drugs.
Meanwhile, Lucinda refuses to go to the police because she doesn’t want her husband to find out about the affair.
Screenwriter Beattie, who recently won much acclaim for his most recent nice-guy-in-a-bind thriller, Collateral, primes the final two-thirds of Derailed for a lightweight romp full of murder, betrayal, twists and turns – many of which can be guessed as the plot moves along. The movie plays quickly as it runs down its genre checklist, clicking away until it reaches its climax.
It’s nothing new, but it proves three good actors can take a mediocre script full of the same old, same old and perform a theatrical spit-shine.
It’s nothing special. But it’s fun.
Contact reporter Jonathan Cribbs at cribbsdbk@gmail.com.
