Clive Owen Soft On Crime?

While the above post is my ‘official’ review of Derailed. What follows is a spoiler filled diatribe of questions and thoughts about the movie. You might think I’m being unnecessarily harsh. That’s okay, I like picking apart movies…especially if I think they could’ve been better with a little help. And Derailed falls into that category.

I think I’ll start doing this with a lot of my reviews, because this type of stuff doesn’t really belong in a movie review per se, but I feel like I’ll have a good time bitching and blathering on about the film’s particulars.

Oh, and if you’ve seen the film (or even if you haven’t) feel free to chime in down in the comments section, I’d love to hear your opinion.

Onto it, shall we?

The main reason Derailed doesn’t work is simply because Charlie (Clive Owen) is a doofus. I mean, he’s got a shitty marriage, there’s no spark between he and bitchy wife (Melissa George), he’s saddled with a sick child, and he just lost a big account at his ad agency. Okay he meets and flirts with Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston), but before they can consummate their tryst, they’re mugged (and her raped) at gunpoint by LaRoche (Vincent Cassel).

Oh, and who doesn’t use the chain lock at hotels? That’s the whole lynchpin of your plan, Lex Luthor? That cheating husbands won’t bother to use the chain local at the seedy hourly rate hotel? It’s not like Lucinda pushes Charlie through the door in a fit of passion so he can’t lock the chain lock. They get inside and just kinda sit there for a minute. What would they do if he had locked the chain-lock? Knock on the door? Do the old SNL ‘Landshark’ routine? What?

Moving on…now, I’m sorry, no matter what sort of illicit behavior you’re into, if someone steals your wallet, you report it to the cops. I mean, come on, even if Lucinda didn’t want to go along with it, (which she doesn’t) Charlie could’ve made up a story about being mugged outside the hotel and still gone to the cops.

Then, when LaRoche calls to blackmail Charlie, he can report that to the cops, too. If wifey finds out what’s going on, Charlie just says the guy who mugged him is trying to extort with lies.

Who is the wife, and for that matter, the cops, going to believe? A family man, or a career criminal?

And at worst, if he has to tell the wife about his near-miss infidelity, then he either divorces out of a loveless marriage or has to deal with an icy wife for a few weeks/months…which was the case already!

But nooooo. Dipshit Charlie gives LaRoche $20,000, thinking he’ll go away and leave him be. Uuh, yeah, criminals don’t want to bleed you dry or anything. Fair is fair, right. Uh-oh, guess what, LaRoche comes back looking for more dough. A hundred grand to be exact, it’s all the money you and wifey have been saving up for your sick kid’s surgery….oops, gotta give that away, too.

I mean, it’d be different if the wife at home was freakin’ Betty Crocker with a porn star body, someone you could understand not wanting to lose, but noooo, all she does is bitch at him about this or that and give him cold, dirty looks.

Oh wait, Winston, the mailroom guy at work, he looks like a rapper (and he is, RZA to be exact…whoever that is), maybe his skinny hockey-loving (huh?) black ass can help Charlie put the fear of God into LaRoche and his enforcer-rapper (Xzibit). Oops, nope, LaRoche kills him before he can even get out of the car.

Another tidbit I really liked was the backstory for Charlie and Winston being buddy-buddy. Apparently Charlie caught Winston stealing some computers from the office and didn’t report it. Maybe he just doesn’t like police stations, who knows?

Despite RZA’s foolish death, he does win this round of the rapper-turned-thespian elimination tournament. Not necessarily because he’s a better actor than Xzibit, it’s just that he actually had a backstory and two characters that cared about him, whereas Xzibit merely had his cornrows, a sharp-looking red security jacket, and a few throwaway lines. It doesn’t matter at this early round, though; we’re just sorting through eventual fodder for the mighty Ludacris.

I wrote in the official review that the characters are so one-note in this film that I feel like actor was probably given exactly one word of direction apiece. Here’s a sampling:

Clive Owen: desperate
Jennifer Aniston: earnest
Vincent Cassel: smarmy
Melissa George: bitchy

And about JA being earnest. She plays it way too well. I (and Charlie) buy her con because she’s so damn earnest, but late in the film, when the big reveal hits, that she’s part of LaRoche’s elaborate scheme…she’s just as earnest, even feeling sorry for Charlie.

Bullshit, I say. She’s gotta be a two-faced cold, impersonal bitch after that reveal. I mean, come on, Reindeer Games pulled that off. How does that feel Derailed, to be schooled by friggin’ Reindeer Games?

Sigh, whoever’s behind this film (I know I could look it up, but I don’t want to get too personal) obviously isn’t married, definitely doesn’t have kids, and most definitely doesn’t have sick kids. I love my wife and will always be completely faithful to her, but if I had to choose between telling her about an almost infidelity or mortgaging our child’s health. No contest, wife gets the bad news, kid gets the kidney (or whatever the hell she needed), bad guys go to jail. End of story.