Derailed Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)November 13th, 2005
Derailed
reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
rating: 2 out of 4
Director: Mikael Hafstrom
Cast: Clive Owen, Jennifer Anniston, Vincent Cassel, RZA Screenplay: Stuart Beattie (based on the novel be James Siegel) MPAA Classification: R (strong disturbing violence, language and some sexuality)
Derailed is inconsequential filmmaking. Blasé cinematic discourse. Not much to like, but nothing all too offensive; simply inconsequential. The film comes as a disappointment to many, especially fans of last year's champion thriller, Collateral. Stuart Beattie, who penned Collateral, was expected to use Derailed as the next step in solidifying his career as a relevant writer. But Derailed has seemed to stall Beattie out. It's based off of the successful bestselling novel by James Siegel, and, like Collateral, has a beautifully ingenious premise. What would an everyman do if he were spun into a scam that he couldn't report because the scene of the crime is in his mistress' bed? Collateral wove a similar foundation with an everyman pinned into the position of carting an assassin around to five marks around Los Angeles. Beattie was probably turned on to the project by the prospect of the everyman's nightmare situation Siegel's book touted. And with Clive Owens behind the everyman role, Derailed certainly seemed promising. But Beattie fell through and director Mikael Hafstrom clearly lacked inspiration. Derailed has the quality of a primetime made-for-TV movie.
They meet on a train. Charlie Schine's (Clive Owens) missed his regular 8:05 and has to board the 8:15, but has also forgotten the ticket fare. Covering the nine dollar ticket is Lucinda (Jennifer Anniston), just trying to do the right thing. Charlie, unsure of how to respond, sits beside her and strikes up conversation. They hit it off, part ways, and later meet up for drink, despite Lucinda's wife Grant and Charlie's wife and daughter, Deanna and Amy (Melissa George, Addison Timlin). Soon the two find themselves in a hotel room peeling each other's clothes off; but as luck would have it, a mugger saves grace and breaks into their room. He takes their wallets and almost departs, but decides on a little sexual assault, raping Lucinda as Charlie lies unconscious beside the bed. Unsure of how their families would react to their original intentions, Charlie and Lucinda decide not to go to the police. The situation heightens, however, when the mugger, LaRoche (Vincent Cassel), calls Charlie at his home and demands $10,000. The blackmail continues like this, striking Charlie's nerves more and more until he's hanging from the lip of a thread, willing to sacrifice everything.
Adultery has been cause for many a great film. Unfaithful, Fatal Attraction, Closer, the list is endless; the lust for a body on the side can cause the most exhilarating of predicaments. The seminal ingredients to this recipe, however, must begin with a pairing of actors that can boil up some chemistry. Clive Owens and Jennifer Anniston sadly do not meet this criterion. And since Derailed requires us to believe in their attraction for the premise to work, the film's foundation starts off shaky. Owens does a fine enough job as usual, controlling each room he enters with cool ease; but Anniston seems to fall flat. She just can't shake the sit-com act from "Friends". But her weak performance can partly be blamed on the script, and largely be blamed on the casting. It's the director's job to find actors with chemistry. They either do or they don't. An actor could be Oscar-worthy but still bomb his/her performance because of a lack of chemistry with the rest of the cast. This, I believe, is the case with Derailed.
Also essential to Derailed is an intimidating antagonist. If the mugger fails to be terrifying in his initial crime, in the hotel room, then he'll fail to scare us when he calls Charlie later at home, demanding the $10,000. His acts--theft and rape--are obviously horrifying, but the way Mikael Hafstrom depicts them is not. I wanted to be scared of LaRoche; afraid of when he might turn up. But him and his henchman, Dexter (Xzibit), act like two scrappy friends from the slums looking for easy cash; not like scheming, diabolical criminals.
Collateral depended mostly on its depth of characters. We cared about what happened in the story because of their interaction. Its plot, like Derailed's, wasn't much; simply an ingenious premise and a series of predictable twists near the end. It was the characters depth that interested us. I think Beattie was looking to ace the same formula again with Derailed. It might have worked; if only Hafstrom's inconsequential direction and the cast's lack of chemistry didn't fall flat as a corpse upon the rest of the film.
-Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
