“Derailed” (The Weinstein Company)
Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen star in the new suspense thriller “Derailed.” In today’s celebrity crazed world you don’t get much bigger than these two. Aniston is the “tabloid flavor of the past few months” and Owen is hot, hot, hot thanks to his role in “The Closer.” So put them in a movie together and you should have an instant hit – unless the movie is “Derailed” and it is almost a train wreck.
Owen plays Charles Schine, a married man with a diabetic daughter. He works in the city writing commercials and commutes home every night. His wife (Melissa George) is a schoolteacher and the couple scrimps and saves every extra dollar to pay for future treatment for their daughter.
One day on the commute into the city Charles meets Lucinda (Aniston), a woman who flirts with him and he reciprocates. They soon find themselves drawn into an affair and they seek a hotel where they can be alone. At the hotel a stranger (Vincent Cassel) breaks in and robs them. He knocks Charles unconscious and rapes Lucinda.
Later this same man contacts Charles and demands money. With each subsequent action, Charles and Lucinda’s lives start spiraling downward. They are at this man’s mercy and refusal will result in disclosure of their affair.
The movie maintains a level of suspense – for a while. But towards the end it requires coincidence after coincidence to reach its climax and that ruins the logic of the movie. The final scenes are so far out they become ludicrous.
Aniston is not the right person to play a femme fatale. She just doesn’t have it in her. Maybe it is all those years of playing “Rachel Green” on “Friends” or maybe it is just her chipmunk-cheeked freshness and cuteness factor. Either way she should just stick to playing romantic comedy roles where she is believable and enjoyable.
As the much put upon Charles, Owen isn’t much more believable than Aniston. Charles is so mild-mannered that he comes off as wimpy at times, which is something one would never accuse Owen of being. When the role changes in mid-stream the audience almost gets whiplash.
The film is rated R for profanity and violence.
It is hard to tell if two other actors could have made this movie work. It is doubtful. The logic of the plot is fatal but these two actors surely don’t help the film. They and the storyline get “derailed” about half way through the running time of the movie and the film becomes just short of a total “train wreck.”
I scored “Derailed” a commuted 4 out of 10.
