Going off the rails

Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen embark on a steamy affair in Derailed. PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX MOVIES

Set in Chicago, the watchable Derailed is the English-speaking debut of Mikael Hafstrom, director of Evil, one of the better recent Swedish movies. Derailed has the plot of an archetypal 1940s film noir -- discontented family man meets femme fatale, an affair starts, a blackmailer moves in, things go from bad to worse as the hero sinks into a quicksand of guilt and turpitude.

On to this a couple of clever twists are added, one of which wouldn't have got past the censors in Hollywood's Golden Age.

The movie's stars are Clive Owen (handsome adman), Jennifer Aniston (the stranger he meets on a train) and Vincent Cassel (as unpleasant a French crook as ever got through immigration).

The movie goes on release in Taiwan today.