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Yet the movie it most resembles -- coincidentally in this case, given the proximity of the release dates -- is this past summer's indie sleeper, Hustle & Flow. Instead of a drug dealer attempting to make it as a rap star, Hustle focuses on a pimp attempting to make it as a rap star. (Terrence Howard, who played the lead in Hustle, has a key supporting role in Get Rich.) It's fascinating to place both films side-by-side and see how, though utilizing basically the same story, one succeeds while the other doesn't. With its rich characterizations and pungent atmosphere, Hustle flows. Get Rich Or Die Tryin', with its frayed theatrics and stiff performance by 50 Cent, isn't worth a plugged nickel.
DreamWorks may be known as the studio behind such modern classics as Saving Private Ryan and American Beauty, but when the studio first opened its doors back in the fall of 1997, the debut release that staggered out was the tepid George Clooney-Nicole Kidman action yarn The Peacemaker. But DreamWorks had it good compared to The Weinstein Company, the fledgling studio created by former Miramax heads Harvey and Bob Weinstein after their partnership with Disney came to a messy end.
Under the Miramax banner, the brothers Weinstein masterminded such critical bonanzas as The Piano, The English Patient and The Aviator, and it would have been reasonable to expect their coming-out project to be a classy affair starring one of their regulars like Gwyneth Paltrow or Johnny Depp. But Derailed, an awful thriller featuring a post-Friends (and post-Brad) Jennifer Aniston attempting to jumpstart a movie career, isn't exactly a sparkling champagne bottle with which to christen a new ship. If anything, it bypasses DreamWorks and recalls the formation of TriStar Pictures back in the early 80s, when the quality of its initial slate was so dreadful that one critic suggested the company should change its name to OneStar.
Certainly, Derailed is deserving of whatever critical scorn is tossed its way, whether it's in the form of a solitary star, a down-turned thumb or even an extended middle finger. Mining that fertile Fatal Attraction terrain, this finds unhappily married business executives Charles Schine (Clive Owen) and Lucinda Harris (Aniston) meeting as strangers on a train, engaging in flirtatious banter before deciding to get down and dirty in a seedy hotel room. But while still engaged in foreplay, they're suddenly disturbed by Laroche (Vincent Cassel), a French thug who rapes Lucinda (shades of Cassel's Irreversible), beats Charles and murders the English language.
Needless to say, this puts a damper on any hot-to-trot vibes, so Charles and Lucinda go their separate ways, electing not to call the police and hoping to put the whole sordid incident behind them. But Laroche isn't through toying with Charles' life, so he starts blackmailing him, threatening to tell Charles' wife (Melinda George) about his wandering eye unless he's paid $20,000 and, later, $100,000.
Since Lucinda still refuses to go to the police, and since developing circumstances point to Charles as being responsible for some additional crimes, the hapless businessman decides he must go it alone if he wants to catch the crook.
Maybe it's just me, but I have a real problem when I read a brief synopsis of a mystery movie and based on that can figure out the major plot twist even before stepping foot into the theater. Yes, Derailed is that obvious. But I'm not claiming to possess Holmesian sleuthing skills: I related the basic story outline to three acquaintances and they likewise all guessed the big twist that, frankly, must have been only a surprise to the studio dolts who OKed this project.
Yet predictability isn't the only problem with Derailed. For this "shocking" twist to work, director Mikael Hafstrom and scripter Stuart Beattie (adapting James Siegel's novel) work overtime setting up scenarios that travel so far beyond stupid that they're nothing less than clinically brain-dead. It's clear that Hafstrom and Beattie hoped to emulate that "innocent man in a world of trouble" formula that worked so well for Hitchcock in everything from The 39 Steps to Frenzy. But the character of Charles is such an imbecile in every decision he makes that it eventually grows tiresome wondering how he'll screw up next. If Hitchcock's heroes had been this dense, then Cary Grant would have been chopped down by the crop-duster in North By Northwest and Robert Cummings would have been the one slipping off the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur.
