Derailed - A thriller that does the job

Question: Do you generally like thrillers?  If the answer is ‘Yes’ then you should appreciate this.  It’s nothing special, but there’s just about enough to it to warrant investing an hour and a half of your time into it.  Sure, you may not remember it in twenty years, but I think you’ll be entertained nonetheless.

For a start you have two decent leads – Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston and they always turn in pretty decent performances.  They play a couple of high-flying city executives who meet by coincidence on a train and begin an affair.  Let’s just say things go downhill for the pair of them pretty soon after that.

You may notice that I’m steering clear of mentioning too much about the plot.  Basically, the reason is that the plot – although nothing absolutely amazing – is one of the film’s selling points.  If I told you too much about what happens, it would definitely detract from the film’s enjoyment as you’d probably start guessing (correctly) what was going to happen.

There’s enough to it to raise it above the masses of ‘straight-to-DVD’ B-movies out there.  Fans of the two leads will obviously enjoy it more and anyone who likes something just that little bit tense should be entertained by it.

Obviously, there are a couple of moments where you may find yourself yelling at the screen, “But I wouldn’t do that!” You’re just going to have to accept that on-screen characters don’t always do what we would.  Don’t let it ruin the film for you.  It’s better than a few nit-picked gripes with the overall plot.

Nothing too special, just solid.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that