Derailed a lustful train wreck
Derailed OO Starring Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassel, RZA and Xzibit. Directed by Mikael Håfström. At major theatres. 14A “ They Never Saw It Coming,” teases the poster for Derailed, and you have to wonder if blindness is now a prerequisite for Hollywood characters.
Let’s work that railway metaphor and declare that the numerous plot twists of this Bmovie thriller are signalled right down the line, setting off alarm bells like a runaway train. That’s until the second half, when the story suddenly slams into a brick wall of implausibility.
If Clive Owen’s adman Charles really thinks he can get away with bedding another married Chicago commuter Lucinda ( Jennifer Aniston) without getting into some kind of trouble, he probably also thinks he’s booked passage on the Hogwarts Express.
Especially when Lucinda begins talking as if she’s auditioning to play the Hitchcock blonde in a dinner- theatre tribute to North by Northwest: “ I’m a financial advisor,” she coos. “I cheat clients.”
Charles responds by assuring her, “ I’ve got all kinds of guilt.”
That he does, especially when Vincent Cassel’s blackmailing and emasculating LaRoche shows up in mid- tryst, cackling like Inspector Clouseau and demanding vast sums of mon- ay from the two to prevent their dirty secrets from being revealed. Mon- ay that Charles and his shrewish wife Deanna ( Melissa George) had been saving to buy life-saving experimental medicine for their perky-butpouty daughter Amy ( Addison Timlin). The inanity of screenwriter Stuart Beattie’s script is part of the price we must pay for the privilege of gawking upon Aniston, and pondering how her life has been since Brad Pitt callously dumped her. Obviously, it’s not going well enough for her to land better movies than this. But our main concern shouldn’t be Aniston’s well being, as important as that is. Of graver urgency is how anyone thought of casting her in the role of a femme fatale, the kind that leaves men weak at the knees before severing their cojones. Is it possible episodes of Friends never aired in director Mikael Håfström’s homeland Sweden? And what mischievous imp thought it could possibly be entertaining to watch Clive Owen playing a Dagwood Bumstead type, too weak to do anything but continually acquiesce to LaRoche’s escalating demands?
Watching this almost- Bond be humbled at almost every turn is as thrilling as seeing Arnold’s Terminator get sold for scrap metal. It just ain’t right — although as ain’t- right entertainment goes, you could do worse.
This movie is the first for The Weinstein Company, the escape hatch that brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein used as they exited Miramax Films, now a Disney albatross. Can the Weinsteins hope for a flowering of more successful movies, now that they have their train on the track? They just might, if they peer at Derailed and spot the unrealized talents in rappers-turned-actors RZA and Xzibit, one playing the fly guy and the other the heavy. Both have potential, and both are waiting for their close- ups.