Derailed

Derailed is a 2005 thriller starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston. The film is well-paced and engages the viewer in the storyline thanks to some decent direction and decent performances. Everything in the film is precisely that: decent. It is an average thriller with a twist or two that sets it just slightly above par, creating an interest and a few nice moments along the way that serve to deliver a few “what just happened?” moments.

Clive Owen is good, not great, as Charles Schine, the teacher turned advertiser with the diabetic daughter who is trying to make more money by working a job in the big city. On one fateful day, Schine misses his usual train and ends up on a train with Aniston’s character. Aniston’s Lucinda Harris is a somewhat flirty regular woman with a family and a marriage that is distant. She and Schine captivate one another right away and a relationship develops.

The relationship develops right up until the point when they are about to engage in some steamy sex in a seedy hotel. The pair are robbed by a seedy yet intelligently creepy thug played by Vincent Cassel. LaRoche, as he is called, turns out to be more than just an average thug however and he continues to track and disturb Charles Schine for the remainder of the film, extorting several thousand dollars from him.

The twist arrives and I must admit, I was surprised. It was well-done, tightly engaging, and wound up nicely. It was, however, somewhat lacking in overall delivery and could have been brought about in a somewhat more subtle and chilling fashion. Instead, director Mikael Hafstrom delivers a typical Hollywood ending that allows Owen`s Schine to get the bad guy, as it were, and wrap things up in a nice little package. The issue with this is that they avoid the near-Hitchcockian setup they achieved by developing the plot in the first place and abandoned the rising tension.

The performances were somewhat lacking, with Owen and Cassel easily being the strongest characters out of the cast. Cassel brought a tinge of slick deceit to his role as LaRoche, while Owen brought a dark innocence to Schine. The development of the characters was good enough, but certainly wasn’t the prime focal point of Derailed. Instead, this film is all about the twist. Thankfully, it’s quite a good one.

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