Derailed Review (Sunday Business Post)

Derailed
Principle Cast: Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassell.
Review: Jonathan McCrea

Ludicrous is a word rare enough in film reviews these days but it’s a term that fits Derailed like a tailor-made glove. Having made his name at home, Swedish director Mikael Håfström flies over to Hollywood to make his English-speaking debut with amusing results.
The story is adapted from James Spiegel’s rather gritty novel. Two business executives Charles Schine (Clive Owen) and Lucinda Harris (Jennifer Anniston) meet on a train and are immediately attracted to each other. Despite both being married, they meet for lunch and end up going to a motel for the night. When a brutal mugger (Vincent Cassell) breaks into their room and catches them in flagrante delicto, their lives are turned upside-down.
The late master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock had a canny ability to pull all the pieces together to create cliffhangers of substance that did more than just titillate. Alas, just as a John Grisham page-turner is not about prose or character development, most modern thrillers are rarely about realistic dialogue or Oscar-winning performances. They’re about shock and awe aplenty. M Knight Shamayalan’s films are the perfect illustration. Instead of identifying with the character, the viewer spends ninety minutes trying to figure out the twist at the end. Usually someone turns out to be a ghost.
Derailed is cut from similar cloth. With plot turns borrowed from everything from Nine Queens to The Usual Suspects and an entirely unnecessary ending hanging on like a severed limb, this Frankenstein’s monster of a film should be rubbish. Aniston and Owen are unconvincing in almost every way. The once-sexy waitress from Friends has a lot more trouble ten years on trying to pull off the sophisticated seductress. Owen looks like he’s left the oven on for most of the film. Rza from hip-hop outfit Wu-Tang is cringeworthy in his token rapper bit-part; only Vincent Cassell manages a par for the course as callous baddie.
So why then is Derailed so enjoyable? It seems that this is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. The dramatic zigzags are by turns disquieting then ludicrous. This is popcorn pulp-fiction that won’t leave a trace on Monday morning, but an inexplicably satisfactory trip to the cinema nonetheless.
***