¶ For some time, I’ve had an itch to see Derailed again. I bracket Mikael Håfström’s 2005 thriller with two other Chicago movies, The Lake House and Source Code, probably because they all utilize commuter trains. In Derailed, Jennifer Aniston is a villain, although you don’t know that until well into the picture, and she dies soon after. It’s actually a surprisingly small part for such a big star. The movie belongs to the men, Clive Owen and Vincent Cassel. I wouldn’t want to see a film in which Cassel was more violent than he is here. Clive Owen does a great job being the nice guy who makes a mistake and then gets tough. All right, he gets lucky. But he works it, and he’s not squeamish with the guns. 

Aside from its three stars, though, Derailed is rather too businesslike to be engrossing. You just want Owen’s character to extricate himself from a horrible mess so that you can send the DVD back to Video Room. I blame Chicago.

It did get me through a mountain of ironing. 

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