By Edwardo Jackson

How do you repay a good Samaritan who pays for your train fare the day you happened to leave your cash at home? Why you start an affair with them, of course. Or such is the case with Chicago suburbanites Lucinda Harris (Aniston) and Charles Schine (Owen), when the former pays for the latter's fare, sparking a conversation that eventually leads to Lucinda readying to cheat on her absentee rich husband and Charles to deceive his busy, slightly disconnected teacher wife Deanna (Melissa George). At the moment of would-be adultery in a seedy motel, Charles and Lucinda are mugged in their room with a brutal attack that leaves them both emotionally and physically scarred. As they try to hide the attack from themselves and their loved ones, the nervy, French assailant Laroche (Cassel) begins to extort struggling commercials executive Charles out of the money he had saved for a special treatment for his diabetes-riddled daughter.

Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston) and Charles (Clive Owen) work through a tense moment in Derailed.

Hats off to Mikael Hafstrom, an Oscar-nominated Swedish director making his American screen debut. Overcoming a decent yet unspectacular script by Stuart Beattie, Hafstrom has made a film that grows more involving as it rolls along - and serves as a poster child for marital fidelity. Opening curiously at a prison yard before segueing into the suburban disassociation of the Schine household, Derailed seems conventional - even predictable - enough until a second act complication comes out of nowhere with the force of a Mack truck falling from the sky (good job, Beattie; great direction Hafstrom). Following that with a very unshocking "twist" (bad job, Beattie; decent job, Hafstrom), Derailed steams along to a credulity-straining yet exciting climax (good job, Beattie; GREAT job Hafstrom) that pretty much forgives some of the script's more obvious features.

Clive Owen's my man, so believable and casually intense as he is. So it comes as no surprise that he's eminently credible as good guy Charles (a.k.a. "Chucks") who, in every situation, just wants to do the right thing, even if it's not the honest thing. In fact, his third act actions had the preview audience CLAPPING for a would-be adulterer who's ready to bankrupt his daughter's treatment fund over an almost-affair! Good stuff, Clive. Owen also enjoys a nice, if charismatically one-sided friendship with Winston, a paroled mailroom worker played with flashes of low key urban cool by Wu-Tang Clan's Rza. And one of my boys, fellow alumnus, and future Wall Candidate Giancarlo Esposito, arrives in the second half with a nicely underplayed assist to the proceedings.

Aniston and Owen stare down death in the latest film by Mikael Hafstrom.
Publicly thanking Hafstrom for casting her against type, Jennifer Aniston (no, not "Vaughniston") does fine in another dramatic role, this one with a far edgier, sexualized tone than her underseen, laudable turn in 2002's "The Good Girl." Strip away the beauty, the celebrity relationships, the interest compounding on her million dollar per episode Friends paychecks (woo - let's just take a moment to acknowledge the interest - not to mention syndication residuals - whoa! Just caught a hot flash. Okay, I'm good), and the much ballyhooed hair, and what you're left with in Aniston is a capable, confident actor. Nobody affiliated with this project will win an Oscar, but I believed her almost as much as I did Clive. She's not Wall-ready yet as her (Oscar-nominated) co-star is, but I like where her head - and hair - is at.

Derailed is rated R and is currently in theaters