Derailed
Yeah, yeah, yeah – I heard the bad reviews. I like Jennifer Aniston, though, and Clive Owen is usually good to watch (in more ways than one), so I gave it a try.
I tend to like my suspense movies to be, well, suspenseful. This one was so obvious I kept thinking I must be wrong; surely there must be a twist coming that I was not seeing, surely it couldn’t be as insipid as it seemed. Unfortunately, it was every bit as predictable as the alphabet, but not as nuanced.
It also suffers from Thelma & Louise syndrome – two people making bad decision after bad decision, spiraling down into a worsening situation, able to stop it at any point simply by going to the authorities, choosing to continue on their merry little doomed way. By the end you actually want them to get taken out of the gene pool (I was so glad to see Thelma & Louise die – they were just wasting oxygen and police resources).
However, it took my boyfriend to point out one of the big failings – I just couldn’t put my finger on it. He nailed it right away; you just don’t buy Clive Owen as such a wuss. 1 of 5 just because I know a couple of girls who will sit through it solely to look at him for an hour or so.
Rotten Tomatoes: Critics 20%; Audience 61%