{2jtab: Movie Review}

When adultery goes awry and turns into a robbery, hopefully, Clive Owen will be there to “uncomplicate” it for you.  That is IF you never plan on calling the cops in the first place for fear of getting caught cheating on your spouse.  Chances are slim Mr. Owen would be there, but chances are also slim that you’ll be the victim of a double-cross so poorly telegraphed by a script better used as fire fodder, too.  But, hey, the circumspect adultery is only one of the many implausibilities you’ll need to worry about with Mikael Hafstrom’s hobbling Derailed, now on blu-ray courtesy of the Weinsteins.

Charles Schine (Owen) finds himself in a mostly loveless marriage due to the stress of his daughter’s type-I diabetes illness.  Soon enough, he finds himself swapping saliva with a train-hopping temptress named Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston).  They get close, then closer, and then, on the night they have selected to consummate their intentions with each other, all hell breaks loose as their coitus is interrupted and turned into a robbery and then a rape.  Enter Laroche (Vincent Cassel), a conniving thief who takes Charles for everything he is worth, he’s mean and twisted and his very presence seems to disrupt everything Charles thinks he knows about what is happening to him.  He doesn’t and it will take rappers Xzibit and RZA to help him figure out just what the truth is.

The simple truth is that this film, while intended to become “derailed” during the adultery/robbery scene, is unhinged from the beginning.  Owen plays an unlikable idiot from the beginning and never does anything to garner any sympathy from the audience.  You know you’re up poop river without a paddle when his daughter’s diabetic relapse does nothing for the audience.  Owen and the film want you to compare both to a Jimmy Stewart performance in an Alfred Hitchcock film, but Derailed is about as far away from the intelligence of Hitchcock you can get.

Aniston’s performance is a one-note affair: look sexy.  She accomplishes this, but can’t muster enough tears to make us feel that any of this is really happening.  It’s not.  The whole thing is a set-up, but you already know this.  The paper-thin plot – written by Stuart Beattie – leaves little to the imagination, including the revenge-driven jailhouse shanking epilogue.  The only actor who seems to be really alive in this is Cassel, but even he could be accused of toughening up his Ocean’s Twelve thieving character instead of being wholly original.

Derailed is an easy and breezy affair for those audiences used to the genre of thrillers.  Even in its unrated format there is nothing sexy or satisfying about this story which is a big problem.  The other is that, when the whole twist to the narrative should be a surprise, and it absolutely isn’t, of course.  It can’t even brew up enough honesty to shock its viewers with a rape sequence.

Derailed isn’t dangerous.  It isn’t dark either.  It’s just plain silly.

{pgomakase}

{2jtab: Blu-ray/DVD Details}

Component Grades Movie Blu-ray Disc Blu-ray Experience

Blu-ray Details:

Available on Blu-ray - December 28, 2010
Screen Formats: 2.40:1
Subtitles: English; French
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1; French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Discs: 25GB Blu-ray Disc; Single disc (1 BD)

Filmed and originally released in 2005, but it looks – especially on this transfer – as if it was shot in 1976.  The 1080p transfer is grainy with little detail. The colors aren’t consistent and there’s random specks, both digital and physical, encapsulating the picture. The lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is also a letdown. There’s a lot of dialogue and the surround sound isn’t used to the specs it should be, meaning that there are lots of missed opportunities in creating a sound field with this release.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• None

Special Features:

Keeping in par with a lackluster release, the disc offers very little supplemental material. There are a couple of deleted scenes which expand the back-story of the daughter and hint at an affair that the wife had with the principal of the daughter’s school. Yet, Owen’s lifeless reaction is enough to understand why this bit of information was removed from the film.

• Deleted Scenes (11 min)
• Making of ‘Derailed’ (8 min)
• Theatrical Trailer

{pgomakase}

{/2jtabs}