Derailed

A Chicago ad executive (Clive Owen) checks into a seedy hotel with an unhappily married investment banker (Jennifer Aniston), but before they can consummate their affair, a man breaks in, robs them and rapes the woman. Then, the next day, he phones the executive, demanding more money to keep the affair a secret. Stuart Beattie’s script (and, presumably, the James Siegel novel on which it’s based) has plot twists that the alert viewer will see coming from the start, plus a basic implausibility that can’t be concealed. The cast is good (though Owen’s lugubrious gloom is beginning to wear thin), and director Mikael Håfström gives the action a nasty, insidious charge that keeps us staring, transfixed. But in the end, for all the macabre fascination, Hafstrom can’t deliver the cathartic satisfaction we expect.