Jen's career goes off the rails

Another week, another Jennifer Aniston flop. Derailed, a sub-Hitchcock thriller, stars her alongside Clive Owen, but it's French actor Vincent Cassel who steals the picture.

He plays an extremely vicious psychopath who blackmails Owen's character after discovering him in an adulterous sexual liaison with Aniston. Cassel has a vitality and purpose that the other actors notably lack.

In the right role, Owen can be impressive, but here he's far too passive and, I'm afraid, boring. I like Jennifer Aniston - it's hard not to, after all those years when she was so cute in Friends.

She's also been going through a traumatic time in her private life, with her divorce from Brad Pitt being anything but private. However, she proves here that she's well out of her depth in anything that demands she explores less savoury aspects of herself.

This is a role that might have defeated Barbara Stanwyck or Kathleen Turner in their pomp; it certainly defeats Aniston.

The central twist can be seen coming from much too far away, but what really sinks the picture is our hero's premeditated response to that twist, which is out-of-character, ridiculously convoluted and nauseatingly violent.

Although the first hour or so is reasonably tense, the last third of the film disintegrates before your eyes.