Derailed (2002) Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tomas Arana, Laura Harring, Susan Gibney Movie Review

Derailed (2002)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Laura Harring in Derailed (2002)

The Wrong Track

Secret agent Jacques Kristoff (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is assigned the mission of tracking down and bringing in cat burglar Galina Konstantin (Laura Harring) who has stolen some deadly toxin. Kristoff's wife is not overly pleased when he says he is working on his birthday as she was planning a surprise party for him so instead decides, along with their children, to get on the same train to Munich as Kristoff and Konstantin unaware that he is a secret agent. Unfortunately they are not the only ones of the train and some terrorists are after the toxin which Konstantin has and so Kristoff finds himself under siege on the train as it heads for a dangerous crossing.

I would never consider myself a movie connoisseur as I will watch almost anything from the early silent movies through to modern movies which run out of alphabet to label them with, they are that bad. But it means I have watched a variety of movies and as I watched Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Derailed" it reminded me of two other movies; the more obvious "Under Siege 2" with Van Damme going all "Die Hard" and then the older "The Cassandra Crossing" as we have action on a train involving a deadly toxin and of course a bridge which could lead to major problems. But this isn't some clever train movie with the class and style of "The Cassandra Crossing" but an action movie more in the style of "Under Siege 2".

Now if by chance you watched "Derailed" oblivious to the fact it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme then there is a good chance you are going to be utterly disappointed not only by the fact it uses ideas from other movies but does nothing creative with them. Ironically you are probably going to feel some of that same disappointment if you are a Van Damme fan as not only does it fail to do anything good with the basic storyline but the action of Van Damme being a one man wrecking crew is not that great either. Simply "Derailed" is such a typical production that you watch but never really take anything in other than spotting that young actor Kristopher Van Varenberg who plays Kristoff's son is in fact Van Damme's son.

What this all boils down to is that "Derailed" takes some average ideas pinched from other movies and doesn't do anything to lift them to make them better. In fact it never does anything to make this movie memorable and with more than its share of cheesy lines it actually falls below average.


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