REVIEWED - DERAILED: HERE is a film with ideas way above its station. In the opening few minutes we find Clive Owen, a corporate something-or-other in Chicago, helping his daughter out with her book report. "The author intrigues the reader by twisting the narrative so you never know what's going to happen next," he suggests. Oh please, writes Donald Clarke

The main effect of Owen's hubristic allusion to narrative ingenuity is to prime the viewer to watch out for the big twist. Thus alerted, only a buffoon could miss it.

There are some surprises here, I suppose. Owen turns out to be a feeble milksop who goes all aflutter after being mugged. Jennifer Aniston pops up as a slinky femme fatale with a line in cool erotic patter. Really? If these two are, contrary to everything their respective demeanours suggest, allowed to be those things, can I be an eight-limbed god with the power to annihilate cities?

A sort of Double Indemnity for short attention spans, Derailed begins with Aniston picking up Owen on his train to work. The couple, both married to others, later retire to a hotel room. Vincent Cassel - satisfactorily imposing as ever - bursts through the door, beats Owen to a pulp and rapes Aniston. Later, realising his victims' sensitive situation, he decides to blackmail them.

Mikael Håfström, the Swedish director of the Oscar-nominated Evil, injects just enough adrenalin into the story to make it live. But the picture never gets over the peculiar casting - RZA and Tom Conti in the same film, anyone? - or the plot's dependence on numerous unsustainable premises.

Is it to late to launch a Save the Aniston campaign?