"Derailed" (2005) - Movie Review

When rooting for the good guy, a film got to work its sweat out to justify his crookedness in the mode of defense. The protagonist out in “Derailed” is a loving husband, cheering father and a hard working man in Chicago suburbs, Charles (Clive Owen). His daughter Amy’s (Addison Timlin) life is dangling on medication and that takes him and his wife Deanna (Melissa George) emotionally. He cannot make love to his wife because she reminds the misery and sorrow they are in. Life is not going well for Charles.

On a long hour train journey from suburbs to city, events happen to meet another married woman Lucinda (Jennifer Anniston) and they have the smart and tennis ball game talk which seem to happen only in films. They like it, we like it, so why bother. Anyways, for a depressed and down Charles, this is a welcome change. Lucinda is a career driven and loving mother and for Charles she is a stranger, a friend and some one who can be confided but also offers a cheery face and a possible opportunity for a lusty affair. And that is how much I can go with the plot. The rest has to be figured out by the viewers.

It is a smart film. A racy but a mellow reminder of the gloomy situation Charles is in and in Clive Owen it is on able shoulders. He yells and reacts like the average Joe, us. He is macho, athletic and magnetic but he is in the role of Charles. He is not a bare knuckle fighter. He is the yuppie with a huge problem in his family and an uninvited one to threaten it. Director Mikael Håfström knows the screenplay very well that he pops and answers the doubts and action we would think of putting ourselves in Charles. He accomplishes two things, engaging us closely in to the character and keeping us updated regularly in our guessing game.

We do not want to solve the puzzle because there is not one. It is too scary and useless to solve it when Charles is worried about his life as a rope is dipping him from high building slowly and in one mistake he would lose it all. The circumstances in “Derailed” are possible but how it unknots itself is more than coincidence and reality. There are well defined evil in the form of La Roche (Vincent Cassel) chaining on the fear and brute force on the family men bent for that one mistake. Mikael psychologically circles on the struggling character of Charles.

At the end of the film, it manages to evade the conscience because it has target of globally declared devil to be pounded upon. How much a viewer can bent down on those level of play is up to how much he/she wants to be played. The film is a more real portrayal of a regular man drawn upon into the world he does not even want to be whiskered upon. He lives in the suburbs for that reason to minimize his time of stay in a city of wandering crime in dark alleys. And when a person like that is dragged into that, he panics and does everything he is been asked to and obeys without a choice. When you are convinced with that, you desperately want him to come up and conquer his opposition because Mikael makes you sympathize with Charles, one among every one. An average chump tempted and does not deserve a wretched punishment like he goes through. Can he come clean?

Does “Derailed” is a better film than most thrillers? Yes. Surprisingly it managed to swindle its predictability and deceive me in the conscience it very narrowly walks upon. It in the final moment morphs into a regular thriller one would have accustomed to and at that point of time, we want it to be and hence it promotes from a realistic thriller drama into an entertaining action selling our soul honestly for the greater good. When you look back you may not like it or even feel a little guilty, but “Derailed” is not a film to be thought about deeply as the director itself does not want to.