DVD REVIEW: DERAILED

(Just a quick note to say that this marks my 100th review for CHUD and I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank Mr. Nick and Mr. Dave for giving a fan of the site a chance to contribute and also to thank anyone who’s bothered to glance at or perhaps even to read a few lines of my work. I’ve always considered this gig a lot of fun, and these are a great bunch of guys to work with, especially (I Heart) George Merchan who always makes my shit look nice up on the page. I hope to continue with CHUD for along time to come and hope all my regular readers out there keep on reading. You two guys are great. Thanks again.)

Turns out sleeping with Jennifer Aniston is even harder than you thought…and surprisingly much more dangerous.

The Humans

Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassel, Melissa George, the RZA, Xzibit and Giancarlo Esposito.

Chicago ad exec Charles Schine’s (Owen) normal, suburban life is chugging along at a relatively uninteresting pace. His wife (Melissa George) is more a roommate that he sees in passing than his spouse and his daughter (Addison Timlin) suffers from advanced Type 1 diabetes, which has put a financial strain on the Schine household. Things get interesting for Schine, however, when he meets the sultry Lucinda Harris (Aniston) by chance on the commuter train. Like Schine, Lucinda is a suburban career woman with a disinterested husband and a young daughter. Casual conversation turns into drinks, drinks turn into a trip to the nearest fleabag hotel for a quick romp on the establishment’s queen size. But before Schine can get to second base, the interlude is interrupted by the thuggish hotel front desk clerk, LaRoche (Cassel), who robs them both at gunpoint, beats the tar out of Schine, and repeatedly rapes Lucinda.

At first I didn’t quite know what to make of this flick. The first half fairly creeps along until the hotel scene and then kicks it up a gear from then on until the Reservoir Dogs-style climax. There’s also a semi-ridiculous epilogue involving Schine and one of the main cast members that threatens to (ahem) derail the movie. I’ve seen Owen in plenty of things but never really studied him as he’s never had to carry a movie I’ve seen him in until now. Offhand I’d say he was decent in this film and I can start to see now why he was at the top of the 007 buzz for the longest time (Am I the only one who sees George Lazenby there?) He does have a few shades of Dwight McCarthy here, though. Aniston is quietly alluring as Lucinda and you really feel for what happened to her in the hotel scene. But the two characters that really pop in Derailed are Cassel as the crazy French bastard LaRoche, who chews enough scenery to get a stomach ache; and likewise RZA as Winston is quite good, though he lays the ghetto on a bit too much. The excellent Giancarlo Esposito is criminally underused here as Detective Church. And Xzibit doesn’t get much to do except for point a gun and look like a thug, which, if you’re a fan of his show, Pimp My Ride, you know he’s capable of popping the more than occasional bit of humor.

The artwork is pretty by-the-numbers and unremarkable. I look at it and wonder what everybody seems to be looking at because they’re all looking in different directions. The sound is available in Dolby Digital and the visuals in 2.35:1, which is a fairly unusual choice because most of the film is set in interiors and there’s very few open landscapes to really be showcased. As far as features, there’s five minutes of extra footage (though nothing that screams “UNRATED”). There’s three deleted scenes totaling more than ten minutes that were deleted for good reason and also a theatrical trailer. There’s also the boilerplate making-of that runs about seven minutes and is mostly talking head pieces. You won’t be buying or renting this for the features that’s for sure.