Documentary Review My Date with Drew

My Date with Drew (2004) 

Directed by Brian Herzlinger, Jon Gunn

Written by Documentary 

Starring Brian Herzlinger, Drew Barrymore

Release Date August 5th, 2004

Published November 15th, 2004 

In reviews of Brian Herzlinger's documentary My Date With Drew words like 'charming', 'sweet' and 'cute' are often used. On the other hand, so are the words 'creepy' and 'stalker'. There are clearly two camps on My Date With Drew and I find that I agree with the creepy/stalker side. Yes, My Date With Drew has the admirable quality of extreme low budget filmmaking but it plays more like the audition tape to some dopey reality show. Was Brian Herzlinger making a documentary or just trying to get on MTV before he turned 30.

Brian Herzlinger has had a major crush on Drew Barrymore since he was six years old and first saw E.T. Who can blame him, she was adorable in that film and after some dark detours in her life she has remained adorable. So I can understand Herzlinger's fascination. However that is where we part ways. Where I am happy to admire Drew Barrymore's beauty and talent from afar, Brian Herzlinger took the 1100 hundred dollars he won on a game show and used it to land himself a date with Drew Barrymore and the idea for My Date With Drew was born.

With a camera borrowed from Circuit City that must be back before the 30 day return policy runs out, Brian and his friends set out on a variation of my favorite college drinking game: six degrees of Kevin Bacon--only replacing Kevin with Drew. Operating on the theory that everyone in L.A knows someone who knows someone who's cousin knows someone's facialist, Brian sets out to meet anyone who can get him close to Drew. Indeed he even talks to Drew's actual facialist.

The film features interviews with people like Drew's cousin, who has actually never met Drew despite the relationship. Brian interviews actor Eric Roberts who is on a TV show with Andy Dick who it is rumored is friends with Drew. Roberts offers little other than the fact that he may be slightly creepier than Brian. Roberts is also no help in getting Andy Dick who refuses an interview request. Somehow Brian works his way down the Hollywood food chain to Corey Feldman who dated Drew for two months sometime in the 80's but is no help in contacting her now.

That hint of irony that Brian brings to his encounters with Roberts and Feldman betrays the premise that My Date With Drew is really sincere. Feldman and Roberts have that desperate quality of the C-list celebs who will make time for anything they can put on the resume, and Herzlinger seems to exploit that in scenes that are more sad than funny. Therein lies the biggest problem with My Date With Drew, Brian Herzlinger's lack of sincerity.

I simply did not believe the whole thing was anything more than a career-making stunt. I appreciated his ingenuity but thought his abuse of Ms. Barrymore's persona was creepy and self serving. That eventually Ms. Barrymore see's his motives as pure and clever does not sway my opinion. The film lives and dies by Herzlinger's sincere feelings about Drew Barrymore and her work and I never bought it.

Yes, Brian gets his date with Drew, and her love for the project and sincere appreciation of Brian's persistence nearly made me like him and the movie. Barrymore takes the perspective that Brian is merely ambitious and ingenious and she is happy to help that. But that idea is at odds with much of what came before. Is this about Brian sincerely wanting to meet his favorite celebrity, or is this about his career? The film blurs Brian's real intentions.

There is a story of how Matt Stone and Trey Parker managed to get South Park on the air. They made a tape for some industry guy who passed it around Hollywood. It landed in the hands of George Clooney and, from there, onto the desks of the people at Comedy Central. That rough tape never aired but it opened a lot of doors. One of the reasons I found My Date With Drew to be less than sincere is that it plays a little like that South Park tape. It's rough but quite clever and plays like Brian Herzlinger's ploy to make a name for himself and not as the sincere childhood pursuit of a dream that Herzlinger claims it is.

I did enjoy Brian Herzlinger's encounter with Drew. She seems genuinely enthused and leaves any kind celebrity pretense out of it. She is truly what you would hope a big star would be like if you met her, and seeing that makes me want to like this little movie. Unfortunately I do not, because she is not the star of the picture.

When on the actual 'date', Drew talks about how chasing a dream and having the drive to make it happen is a wonderful thing and I don't disagree. That Brian Herzlinger set a difficult goal and achieved it is quite admirable but what does it say about that dream if realizing it is merely hero worship and opportunism. The emptiness of Herzlinger's goal and the creepy stalker-esque way he goes about achieving it brings a whole other vibe to the movie that I'm sure is unintended.

The very funny comedian Eugene Mirman once said that some percentage of stalking has to work. Brian Herzlinger may just be the proof of that. Okay, maybe it's a little harsh to call Herzlinger a stalker. The film never portrays him to be dangerous or deranged. The word I would use to describe him is misguided. I would think that someone of Herzlinger's imagination and sticktoitiveness could find something more constructive to do with his time than pursue a celebrity.

I can tell you this: I wish I'd had other, more constructive things to do than watch him pursue a celebrity.

Movie Review Night Catches Us

Night Catches Us (2010) 

Directed by Tanya Hamilton

Written by Tanya Hamilton 

Starring Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Wendell Pierce

Release Date December 3rd, 2010 

Published December 7th, 2010 

A number of movies have tackled the story of the Black Panthers as they rose and became a force on the national scene. Their charismatic leaders became icons and their movement became a legend. As the civil rights era wound out the Panthers seemed to lose their way and many of their stories faded with the movement.

Director Tanya Hamilton takes us back to the time just after the Panthers heyday and in “Night Catches Us” gives us a composite story of the people who lived the legend and what happened to them in the wake of such astonishing drama, revelation, struggle, sadness and in some cases triumph.

It's 1976 and Marcus Washington (Anthony Mackie) is returning home to his South Philadelphia neighborhood for the first time in nearly a decade. Marcus left under a cloud of suspicion after one of his fellow Black Panther Party members was shot and killed by police. The remaining panthers came to believe that he ran because he sold the dead man to the cops.

Now, with his preacher father having passed away, Marcus returns to find many of the tensions he escaped still boiling. Marcus's brother Bostic (Tariq Trotter, The Roots) has become a devout Muslim who maintains a grudge but is more civil than most. The remaining Panther leader, Do Right (Jamie Hector) has allegedly turned to crime and intimidation as the tools of revolution.

Do Right makes his feelings clear by vandalizing Marcus's car, leaving the word 'snitch' etched into the side of the black caddie left to Marcus by his late father. The one person who welcomes Marcus back, even into her home, is Patricia (Kerry Washington), the wife of Marcus's former Panther brother who was killed by police.

The history between Marcus and Patricia is thick with meaning and in it “Night Catches Us” has a strong romantic/dramatic hook. Sadly, the rest of the plot hinges on characters whose actions are forced and used only as plot drivers, as if director Tanya Hamilton felt she didn't have enough juice in Marcus and Patricia's relationship to move the film forward.

Amari Cheatom plays Jimmy, Patricia's troubled cousin. Jimmy has a painful encounter with local cops that leads him on a path to the kind of militancy he believes the Panthers stood for. You might think Marcus would try to stop him but there would be no point, Jimmy is a creation of the plot meant to push conflict.

Stronger supporting performances come from Wendell Pierce as a corrupt cop holding Marcus's most difficult secret and young Jamara Griffin as Patricia's 9 year old daughter Iris. Pierce brings back fond memories of his performance as a much better detective on HBO's The Wire. Griffin is a young talent to watch, a natural actress with terrific instincts and a distinctive face.

When “Night Catches Us” is focused on Marcus and Patricia, their past and possible future, it is deeply moving and evocative. Setting their story, their past, with that of the Black Panthers, including archive footage to underscore the importance of the struggle they were fictionally part of, gives it a fiery context that encompasses them, their neighborhood and all around them. 

Jimmy, unfortunately, is a dramatic contrivance that distracts from the main story of “Night Catches Us” and leads us to believe that there is not enough in the main story to give the film the drive it needs to get to a satisfying conclusion. Too bad, Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington indeed do deliver the goods. There was no need for contrivance, no reason for writer-director Hamilton to lack confidence and undermine her main story.

Movie Review Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals (2016) 

Directed by Tom Ford

Written by Tom Ford 

Starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon

Release Date November 18th, 2006 

Published November 16th, 2006 

“Nocturnal Animals” is a daring film of unique power and affect. Directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, the film stars Amy Adams as Susan, a desperately unhappy Los Angeles art dealer whose past comes back to haunt her in the form of a book written by her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). Reading the book, alone in her enormous and empty home over a weekend where her new husband (Armie Hammer) is out of town, Susan is struck by feelings for Edward she thought she’d lost years ago.

The book is called “Nocturnal Animals” and it is dedicated to Susan. The book is a revenge thriller about a family traveling through a West Texas desert when they are menaced by a group of criminals. We see the story play out in Susan’s imagination with Edward in the lead role of Tony, a good man but not one well suited for a confrontation with criminals. We watch as the confrontation between Tony’s family and the criminals grows from harassment to kidnapping and to something extraordinarily disturbing.

The film goes on to lay in the back story of how Susan and Edward met, fell in love and eventually fell apart. Susan devastated Tony and created a resentment that lasted nearly two decades. The book he’s written is in many ways a reflection of his hurt feelings but you will need to see the movie for yourself to follow that line of logic as I will not spoil anything here.

Michael Shannon plays a role in “Nocturnal Animals” that I am reluctant to go into in order to avoid spoilers. That said, Shannon is Oscar-level brilliant. Shannon acts with every inch of his gaunt frame and with his devastating glare. The character is not unlike a Quentin Tarentino character full of pith and anger in equal measure but slightly less morally ambivalent. It’s an exceptional performance, easily one of the best single performances of 2016.

“Nocturnal Animals” is the second feature film for Director Tom Ford following his artful debut, 2009’s “A Single Man” which won an Oscar for Colin Firth’s remarkable lead performance. Coming from the world of fashion, Ford has a phenomenal eye. Both “Nocturnal Animals” and “A Single Man” are gorgeous to look at even as they explore the uglier side of life. Even the grittiest moments of “Nocturnal Animals” have a beauty to them that most filmmakers would have foregone in trying to underline the grit. Ford smartly uses the crisp, clear cinematography to show that beauty exists even in the dark.

I must add a bit of a caveat to this review. Though I am recommending the movie highly, “Nocturnal Animals” is not for all audiences. The first moments of the film are taunting and provocative and will cause some people to walk out of the theater in protest. Full disclosure, I turned away from the screen on my first viewing and had to force myself to confront the images the second time I watched the film for this review. The opening has little to do with the rest of the movie but I appreciate how this credits sequence jolts us in the audience to wide attention.

Moviegoing is often a passive experience and the credits sequence of “Nocturnal Animals” breaks through that passivity in no uncertain terms. Could the film have done without the jolt? Probably. The story being told is quite good and the performances of Adams, Gyllenhaal, and especially Michael Shannon are strong enough to jolt audiences on their own. That said, I understand the inclusion of the opening and on reflection I appreciate the jolt even as it is quite forceful.

Movie Review Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Directed by Mark Romanek

Written by Alex Garland 

Starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling 

Release Date September 15th, 2010

Published November 4th, 2010 

The wonderful thing about “Never Let Me” Go is how its languorousness invites the viewer to project a meaning onto it. Yes, that projection requires ignoring a few things about the characters and what is happening on screen but there is something valuable and even entertaining about a movie that gives the viewer so much room to move around. Some have found parallels to the holocaust. The great Roger Ebert finds a modern equivalent in the sad fate of workers at big box stores like Wal-Mart. Other critics acknowledge a philosophical truth in the film that is just out of their grasp but somehow knowing it is there is enough for them.

Strangely, I find myself somewhere within that last group. I too want to believe and have searched for various philosophic or metaphoric meanings in Mark Romanek's gorgeous direction and Alex Garland's teasing screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's moving if also vaguely interpreted novel.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan) fell in love with Tommy when both were young students at an out of the way private school somewhere in the English countryside. Kathy was a self conscious introvert with the soul of an artist. Tommy was an outcast prone to violent rages that only served to make him even more of an outcast.

The center of their world is their relationship with Ruth (Keira Knightley) a popular girl who befriended Kathy in search of a worshiper and fell in with Tommy as a way of preventing that worship from being cast elsewhere. It's clear to us and especially clear to Ruth that Tommy and Kathy should be together but her insecure need for their attention supersedes her ability to let her friends be happy.

This is especially tragic because Hailsham is not merely a country boarding school and the students are not really students at all. As explained in excruciating detail by one of the teachers, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), Hailsham students will have painfully short lives in which they will donate their organs until they complete, a nicer way of saying they are spare parts until they die.

The brilliance of “Never Let Me Go” is not in setting up a life or death situation but in the real human ways that these characters take in this extraordinary information and assimilate this knowledge as part of who they are rather than the going concern of some sci fi story of survival.

The arc of the average life is played out with a timeline in mind that lasts a lot longer in our minds than in reality. For Kathy, Tommy and Ruth the arc of birth, life and death is compacted into a mere 30 years at most yet they grow and age and live as if a full life were lived.

They cram their short lives with experiences of love and compassion that a longer life no doubt takes for granted. When Kathy finally gets the opportunity to be with Tommy she doesn't spend much time lamenting, they get right to loving and while there is temporary hope for more life, Kathy is not so concerned about prolonging love as she is about enjoying what she has.

Ruth's is the saddest of all of the stories. Her life is marked by pettiness and a greed for attention. She found weaker kids and forced herself on their attention and in her fight to remain at the center of their world she destroyed them and herself, robbing all of them of the little life they could have had.

Carey Mulligan deserved an Oscar for her work in “Never Let Me Go.” The heart, the love and the compassion she portrays is the heartbreaking force of the film. A soul as wide and as deep as Kathy's deserved more than to be an organ bank and yet that is not what the film is about, it's about what life she brings to what little life she has and much of that is played on Mulligan's wonderfully expressive face.

Mark Romanek captures the essence of Ishiguro's novel in ways that most directors likely would not. Like Ishiguro, Romanek is not really interested in the grander political points about breeding humans for their organs. Rather, that is the setting for telling human stories about what real people would do in these circumstances. The fate of these characters lends a certain tragedy to them but that tragedy is compounded by what unique, fascinating and thoughtful beings these characters are.

The political points, the metaphors and meanings are ours to bring to the film. What Carey Mulligan, director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland are focused on are the human beings and the lives they live against this unique and tragic background. It's a wonderfully experimental ploy and it works brilliantly as a movie that makes you think for yourself and moves you deeply.

Movie Review My Soul to Take

My Soul to Take (2010) 

Directed by Wes Craven

Written by Wes Craven 

Starring Max Thieriot, Denzel Whitaker, Raul Esparza, Shareeka Epps 

Release Date October 8th, 2010 

Published October 11th, 2010

How could a director as obscenely talented as Wes Craven turn out a work of such asinine numb-scullery as “My Soul to Take?” It's a baffling question. Do not be mistaken, Craven has splashed his name across a number of horrendous movies as a producer. He even directed the stupefying werewolf movie “Cursed.” That however, was written by Kevin Williamson and had any number of production issues.

For what we know of “My Soul to Take” from script to casting to direction, all was controlled by Wes Craven and this fact leaves one to wonder if the now 70 something director has abandoned his faculties.

”My Soul to Take” tells a vaguely “Nightmare on Elm Street-esque” story of a serial killer seeming to strike back after death. The 'Riverton Ripper' was a serial killer who happened to be a family man suffering from schizophrenia. He has seven personalities, one of which happens to be a deranged killer.

On the night of the birth of his son the Ripper murdered his wife and was thought to have died himself in a subsequent stabbing, shooting, car accident, and explosion and drowning. Somehow, doubt remains. 16 years later the son of the serial killer is unknown but he is definitely one of seven children born the night the ripper died.

Get it yet? Seven kids born the night the guy with seven personalities died? Huh? Maybe, each of the kids got one of the personalities? Maybe, even the serial killer one? Oh yeah, you get it. We get it. Oh, good god do we get it. “My Soul to Take” is dopey on a level of severe mental decomposition. What it lacks in intelligence it also lacks in scares, continuity, fluidity and simple coherence.

The cast of “My Soul to Take” is a group of non-descript youngsters just good looking enough to be pleasant but not interesting enough to be memorable save the poor lass saddled with the Jesus Freak personality, Zena Gray, whose flaming red mane and pale, statuesque skin evoke prurient sympathies even as her arch piety is an extensive put off.

The religiosity of “My Soul to Take” bears mentioning if only as yet another of the film's many punching bags alongside basic movie mechanics and compelling storytelling. The prayer of the film's title is used merely as a foreboding sounding phrase and has no use whatsoever in the film other than as a brief bit of dialogue.

The film's one truly pious character is a stunningly beautiful yet entirely overbearing figure whose beauty and innocence is guaranteed to be punished. There is some mention of a group of parents planning a meeting at a church however, because they were all conspirators in a lie about the son of the serial killer their religiosity is cast as something sinister.

I am the last person to defend religion but this type of amateur hour, faux critique is beneath even the most condescending of atheists and it turns “My Soul to Take” from something merely awful into something strangely offensive to even those that might share its perspective.

What a mind-blowing failure this film is. Granted, my feelings are colored by the fact that “My Soul to Take” comes from a director I have long adored and respected and that has certainly colored my opinion; possibly made my reaction even angrier. That said, “My Soul to Take” likely would not have been any good under any director; under this director it's just all the more sad.

Movie Review Jarhead

Jarhead (2005) 

Directed by Sam Mendes 

Written by William Broyles Jr 

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgard, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx 

Release Date November 4th, 2005 

Published November 3rd, 2005 

Anthony Swofford's 2003 non-fiction account of fear and boredom in the Saudi desert during the first gulf war became an immediate bestseller even as American soldiers were on their way back to those same barren and sweltering lands. Swofford's raw prose drew comparisons to the great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson but despite strong sales and critical plaudits Hollywood did not call as quickly as we might expect.

Cowed by the patriotic call to arms, studios attempting to avoid any hint of anti-war material avoided Swofford's book. Then someone actually read it. Jarhead is no anti-war treatise.  Rather, it is a highly intelligent, fiercely honest character study. A brilliant deconstruction of the mindset of the young men who choose to give up every comfort in the world to become not a mere human being but a true jarhead.

Anthony Swofford or Swoff (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a third generation Marine grunt whose reasons for joining up have little to do with family pride. In his own words Swoff joined the marines because he got lost on his way to college, a quip that earned him a slap on the back of the head from a severe drill sergeant. Swoff's wit and smarts (he reads Campus during breaks from basic training) are not the skills the marines recruited him for.

Marines must, as stated by Staff Sergeant Sykes (Jamie Foxx), give up their individuality, freedom and their fears to become one with their weapon and fellow soldiers. It is Sykes who recruits Swoff into the elite sniper unit. Where most soldiers will live for the opportunity to engage thousands of enemies at close range, the sniper lives for one shot at one target at long range. The skill is valuable in classic warfare but as Swoff and his fellow snipers will soon learn, the next American conflict does not offer many opportunities for them to exercise their skills.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded the tiny neighbor nation of Kuwait, a US ally. President George H. W. Bush vowed to defend the people of Kuwait and thousands of American soldiers were deployed into the Middle Eastern desert. Aching for the opportunity to engage the enemy, Swoff and his platoon, which include his rifle partner Troy (Peter Sarsgaard), Harris (Jacob Vargas), Escobar (Laz Alonzo), Kruger (Lucas Black) and others, will see no immediate combat as they protect oil fields in Saudi Arabia far from the front line action which is dominated by American air power.

Days pass endlessly one into another with no action and soon a combination of paranoia, fear, sexual frustration, near heat stroke and ungodly boredom begin to bore holes in each of the men's psyches. Stir crazy is one way to put it but imagine stir crazy with high powered rifles and you get the darker inclination of the frustration that builds.

Director Sam Mendes' Jarhead is the Seinfeld of war movies-- it's a war movie about nothing. Nothing that happens to very particular, very interesting characters. Gyllenhaal's Swoff is a fascinating portrait of a too-smart-for-his-own-good type guy who gets a serious dose of reality when he 'accidentally' ends up in the Marines. Swoff learns that a strong intellect, as sought after as it is, is not going to be enough to get you through the trials of being a Marine. In fact, it can be as much of a detriment as it can be a boon.

Swoff's fierce intelligence is what pushes him over the edge between sanity and insanity on more than one occasion. It is a testament to his training and ability to follow orders that he does not snap and just start killing anything in his path. Swoff likely owes a lot to his platoon brothers, especially Troy, a wannabe Marine life and Swift's best friend.  Troy is a calming influence for the most part, though late in the film circumstances bring even Troy nearly to insanity.

So what of the fear that Jarhead was some kind of anti-war allegory to our current Middle East quagmire? The belief that Jarhead is specifically political is a misread. Jarhead is neither anti-war or pro-war. The film is not, as some have said, a recruiting video for the Marines or an effective tool of deterring enlistment. Jarhead is about specific people in a specific situation and the ways that situation changes them forever.

There are moments of politics, particularly from Lucas Black's Kruger who is the only one who wants to talk about the reasons why highly trained Marines are guarding oil wells and not fighting the enemy. The moments of political speech however are cut off by other marines who hold the line that it doesn't matter why they're there and they have a job to do. Even Swoff, who prides himself on his smarts, is not interested in intellectualizing the war. He just wants to do what he was trained to do: kill, kill, kill.

Swofford and his fellow marines are not exactly sociopaths.  Well not all of them.  Fowler, played by Evan Jones, certainly is a sociopath as expressed in scenes where he enjoys playing with the  body of a dead Iraqi and he boasts of shooting camels for sport, but for the most part these are young men of conscience. It is the conflict of morals that makes these characters so fascinating. Kill or be killed is certainly a helpful justification for violence and killing in war, as is defending the defenseless. But, as the film demonstrates, not all violence in war can be justified and the conflicting emotions are powerfully rendered in Jarhead.

Sam Mendes directs Jarhead in a manner that is observant without being intrusive. With cinematographer Roger Deakins, Mendes gives Jarhead a washed out, barren look that enhances the desert setting by making it look even more vast and bleak than it may actually be. The filmmakers use handheld cameras to ground the action to the soldier's eye level, specifically Shroff's eye. We see only what he sees at times, which helps to further draw the audience into Swoff's mind.

The mantra of grunts on the ground in the first Gulf War was "hurry up and wait". Jarhead perfectly captures the essence of this oxymoronic statement as we watch the soldiers attempt to maintain a constant state of readiness as absolutely nothing happens. The lack of action is what makes Jarhead such a fascinating character study. The soldiers are like subjects in a bizarre experiment and the various paths their personal actions take are the scientific results of their exploitation.

Jarhead is dramatic but also quite humorous. The screenplay by Oscar nominee and Vietnam era Marine William Broyles Jr. runs the gamut from sophomoric and crude to sarcastic to absurd black humor. At times the troops in Jarhead resemble a frat house in the middle of the desert, as in an out of control late night Christmas party or some sexual shenanigans in front of visiting reporter observing a desert football game in full chemical warfare gear.

One of the elements of Jarhead that really fascinated me was the way in which sex and violence were linked. George Carlin long ago did a bit about how bombs and bullets all look like male sex organs, a vivid metaphor for the relationship between sex and violence. Jarhead takes a similar metaphoric approach as soldiers openly discuss masturbation in scenes that are crossed with scenes of bonding with their weapons as if that weapon were part of their body. Superior officers played by Chris Cooper and Dennis Haysbert, in minor cameos, talk about the sexual thrill they get from war.

The subtext of Jarhead can be parsed endlessly for many different meanings. One person I know felt the film was openly homoerotic. She felt that the images of shirtless muscular guys in the desert with no women, bonding with one another, masturbating freely without shame and discussing the sexual thrill they get from warfare was some kind of homosexual allegory. I think my friend is stretching a little but it's a testament to how richly metaphoric the script is that such an interpretation cannot be completely dismissed.

There really is a lot to like about Jarhead. The film is at once highly literate and just as often juvenile. The characters, especially Swoff, are vivid, realistic and well observed and Sam Mendes' direction is stronger than it was even in his Oscar winning effort American Beauty. The movie is not for all audiences, especially those easily offended and certainly not for young children, but for people who like complicated characters, metaphors and great all-around filmmaking Jarhead is a must see. 

Movie Review: Derailed

Derailed (2005) 

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom 

Written by Stuart Beattie 

Starring Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassell, Melissa George, Xzibit 

Release Date November 11th, 2005

Published November 11th, 2005 

When Jennifer Aniston was on "Friends" she was undeniably a star. When she co-starred with Jim Carrey in her first blockbuster movie role in Bruce Almighty, again she looked like a star. Unfortunately, outside her hit TV show and without Jim Carrey to fall back on Jennifer Aniston looks anything but a star in the dreadful thriller Derailed, a misguided attempt to recast Jennifer Aniston as a femme fatale.

Alongside an equally miscast Clive Owen, Aniston struggles with a ridiculous plot, poor direction and a thriller concept that is entirely devoid of thrills.

Though Jennifer Aniston is clearly the draw of Derailed, Clive Owen is the star of the film as Charles, a bored husband and father who jumps at the chance to meet a sexy stranger on a train. That sexy stranger is Lucinda (Aniston), a banker, also married with a child but unhappily married as she is rather quick to confess. The two share a few moments on the train, then lunch the following day, drinks the next night and finally a seedy hotel.

It is in the hotel that a minor fling becomes a huge mess. Just as Charles and Lucinda are getting intimate, the door bursts open and in comes Laroche (Vincent Cassel), a petty thief who they assume just wants a few bucks. If only that was all he wanted.  Unfortunately, before he leaves he beats Charles severely and then rapes Lucinda.

Here is where the films logic becomes derailed, pun intended. So should Charles and Lucinda call the police and report what happened? If they do their spouses will find out what happened and they will lose everything. So it's understandable then that they just let it be. Charles tells his wife Deanna (Melissa George) that he was mugged.  She thankfully does not ask about going to the police, and both Charles and Lucinda go their separate ways.

Not long after, however, Charles gets a call from Laroche asking for twenty grand or else he will tell his wife Deanna that he cheated. Charles again has ample opportunity to come clean to his wife and call the cops but because the plot requires his stupidity, he pays the money. This, despite the fact that he needs the cash to pay for the care of his sick daughter Amy (Addison Timlin), who needs constant care for diabetes.

The money puts off Laroche only temporarily as he once again comes calling, even showing up at Charles' house, asking this time for one hundred grand. Can you guess that Charles still is not smart enough to call the cops? Of course he isn't, but to his luck the screenplay by Stuart Beattie provides a street smart African American ex-con named Winston (rapper RZA pronounced "riza") as a mail room worker at Charles office who offers to help him out for only ten grand.

By this point in the film I would not have cared if Charles enlisted the help of the entire Wu Tang Clan to get the bad guys off his back. Derailed is such a clueless mess of a movie that watching it is more frustrating than a game of Sudoku blindfolded. The lapses of logic are staggeringly stupid and though it's become old hat to call bad thrillers predictable I have to break out that old chestnut as well. Ads for the film ask that we don't give away the big twist and I won't, watch two minutes of the movie and you will guess the twist on your own.

Derailed has one of those idiotic plots that could be cleared up with one smart action by the main character or attention to one minor detail by one of the supporting characters. The players in Derailed must remain willfully ignorant in order for this plot to work and that is endlessly frustrating for the attentive movie goer.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about Derailed is the performance of Clive Owen. Sleepwalking his way through this ridiculous role, Owen's Charlie is passive even when threatened repeatedly and entirely manipulated by the plot at every turn. What may I ask was supposed to make Charlie an interesting thriller hero? He cheats on his wife while she is at home taking care of their sick daughter. He blows the savings meant to save his daughter's life to cover up his affair and when his family is threatened directly by the bad guys he does nothing but accept his third ass whipping in the movie. I hated Charlie as much as I hated the lowlife bad guys who took his money.

I feel very bad for Jennifer Aniston. After losing her husband Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie and watching those two strike box office gold with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she finds her first gig since the breakup to be arguably the worst performance of her career. Worse even than that Leprechaun sequel she was in before "Friends". It's not entirely her fault.  I'm sure someone convinced her to forego her good judgement and believe that this insipid plot could actually work if they sexed it up a bit, but even the sex in Derailed is a letdown.

Clive Owen continues a baffling string of monotone dull performances. Someone in Hollywood desperately wants Clive Owen to be a big star but his performances in Beyond Borders, King Arthur and now Derailed show an actor bored with unchallenging material and allowing that boredom to seep into his performance. When challenged in movies like his breakthrough performance in Croupier, in the thriller I'll Sleep When I'm Dead and the scathing relationship drama Closer, Owen shows he has real acting chops. Stop trying to force Clive Owen to be a star, he clearly doesn't want it.

Derailed is an abysmal movie, a worst of the year list kind of movie. A forgettable, stupid unrelentingly bad B-movie dressed up with A-list actors slumming in idiot parts.