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'Derailed' travels familiar tracks

"They never saw it coming," pants the poster for "Derailed," a new thriller pairing Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston as star-crossed adulterers. In the opening scenes, the script coyly brags that we won't "see it coming" either: A girl's book report talks of an author's cleverly twisted narrative, an advertising client complains that Owen "went off in all these different directions."

The Weinstein Company 'Derailed' 2 out of 5 stars The verdict: The ride draws little interest Director: Mikael Hafstrom Starring: Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Melissa George, Vincent Cassel, Robert 'The RZA' Diggs Run time: 110 minutes Release date: Nov. 11, 2005 Rating: R for strong disturbing violence, language and some sexuality. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

After all this warning, audiences will rightly expect a doozy of a tale, full of twists they haven't seen many times before. They're likely to be disappointed.

Call it "Brief Encounter" by way of "Cape Fear" (though both films might sniff at the comparison). "Derailed" opens with two married professionals meeting cute on the morning commute. It's an awkward introduction for Charles Schine (Owen), who can't believe this stranger is coming on to him, and for viewers, who might find Aniston's negotiation of the scene tough to believe.

The movie spends a good deal of time in this sleazy-romance mode, until after some false starts the couple find themselves in a dive hotel, all set to consummate the relationship. That process is, um, derailed, but the filmmakers would probably prefer you don't know how.

Suffice to say that the characters never get as intimate as they'd like, and that they start the next day in a world of trouble that only gets worse as the weeks drag on. A hammy villain (Vincent Cassel, whose oily French accent provides some entertainment) weasels his way into their lives, demanding huge sums of money and threatening Schine's family.

All of this blackmail action is a good deal more familiar than the filmmakers seem to think. Only the movie's opening scene, which hints at the outcome, makes us think we might not know where it's all going. By the end, it's a little hard to care.