A movie with a title like Derailed is just asking for a negative review. It's almost a shame that a title tailor-made for bad punning is wasted on a movie that is so masterfully executed, so arresting and so deeply terrifying.
Clive Owen plays Charlie Schine, a Chicago ad man with a beautiful wife, an elegant home in the suburbs and six figures in the bank -- all of it put away for his young daughter, a severe diabetic awaiting an expensive transplant operation. But one morning on the commuter rail, Charlie meets Lucinda Harris (Jennifer Aniston) a wry and winsome fellow exec, and soon enough the two are in a sketchy hotel, fumbling adulterously at one another's clothes. It is at this moment that the evil Laroche (Vincent Cassel), brandishing a gun and a killer French accent, breaks into the hotel room and ensnares them both in a blackmail scheme that threatens to cost Schine everything, from his marriage to his job to the money he has saved for his daughter's operation. What follows is a dark and exhilarating tale of deception, depravity and revenge that veers in unexpected directions.
Swedish director Mike Hafstrom gets a muscular performance from Owen, who in films like Derailed, Sin City and Closer has suddenly become Hollywood's new "man's man," with all the good looks and the endearing toughness of a Cary Grant or Paul Newman. Aniston, still attractive by any standard, is no longer 25, but in Derailed, as in The Good Girl, she does far more with her tired beauty than she ever did with perkiness and trendy haircuts on Friends.
Derailed was written by Stuart Beattie, whose previous film, 2004's Collateral, was one of the best thrillers of the young millennium. While Derailed lacks the grittiness and the unique visual texture of that film, it shares its relentless pace and shows its characters a similar, almost sadistic lack of mercy. In one agonizing scene, Schine arrives home to find the blackmailer Laroche hobnobbing with his wife and daughter, pretending to be a charismatic associate from the ad firm. Schine watches as his daughter shows Laroche her drawings and kisses him playfully on the cheek. Later, in private, Laroche asks Schine, "Is your daughter a virgin?"
Derailed, like Collateral, is terrifying in ways that movies like Saw 2 will never understand. Both thrillers follow everyday people tangled up in the sinister workings of a criminal otherworld, people like you and I, who, with one misstep, put themselves and their loved ones at grave risk. What is at stake here is not a gruesome, elaborately staged death, but a life -- a family, a career, a home, a conscience.
Schine's dilemma is made all the worse, and all the more compelling, because he is so deeply implicated in the violence happening around him. It is his philandering that leads him into the hands of Laroche. It is Schine who for secrecy's sake does not go to the police. And in the end, it is Schine who risks his daughter's life.
Thus, Schine's quest for vigilante justice also becomes a quest for redemption. Indeed, it is Schine's imperfection, his complicity in these tragic events, that makes him such a believable and sympathetic character. We root for Schine because he could be anyone -- a co-worker, a friend, a father, even yourself.
Could anything be more terrifying?
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