Derailed
Wait a minute, I saw a variation on this film already, it was called Deception. And it was right around the same time too. Miramax and R ratings, I can’t unsee jacking off into potted plants.
This is probably the original, and Deception is the copy. This plot is more developed, and has more nice characters like RZA and Giancarlo Esposito.
The plot outline is similar, but harsher towards the protagonist: he’s a dude family man working a soul-sucking job to provide for his sick child. Her wife works too, but her sickness doesn’t give them will or opportunity for intimacy, their relationship suffers.
One day on the train, he meets a woman, they flirt, one thing leads to another and a couple days later they are renting a cheap hotel for a quick fuck. Suddenly, a burglar steals their cash and rapes the woman.
The burglar is smart and knows mere petty cash won’t cut it, so he blackmails him for 20k (to see if he bites), then for 100k (the real dough). Our protagonist knows a guy who went to prison, and he can relieve him from his problem for 10k, that’s a lot of weed. The protagonist embezzles the money to pay this homie.
Too bad the burglar is smarter and shoots him in his car right away. Now there’s a detective on the case, he will get there, but it will take some time.
Our protagonist is still none the wiser, and delivers on the 100k, but afterwards he finds out about the deception, and since the money will be gone if the police gets involved, he books a room and waits for the next mark. Instead of laying low after bagging 120k, they get back in the saddle, so our protagonist jumps on them and escapes by miracle, while everyone else gets shot.
Our protagonist gets busted for the embezzlement, but manages to volunteer on a prison, where he finds the burglar still alive and shanks him in the laundry room. That’s cold, even with all the steam around. His daughter gets the special treatment with the money they saved, all is well when it ends well.
There are so many plot holes and unexplained things, but it’s am entertaining film. The protagonist is a complete wet noodle turning cold-blooded assassin, and Clive Owen does that very well. Vincent Cassel as the lower class conmen who can reverse-slumming it when visiting the protagonist’s family, that’s also nice. Jennifer Aniston as the stunning object of desire that falls for the mark is such a stock character, but she still manages to fuck it up. Props for RZA and Xzibit for the Chicago South Side dudes, they are having fun playing both sides of the same coin. Esposito as the detective that let’s him off the hook for morality’s sake is also great. Watch out for bit parts too: the second mark is David Morrisey, and the dirty cop extorting the protagonist for money with the hooker is David Oyelowo.
Not a bit part per-se, but the hooker was played by Weinstein’s wife. Holy shit, the Weinstein thing is worse and worse the more you dig.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.