Derailed

Why did Van Damme make this? Maybe he just had some free time or he agreed to make it if they let his son co-star. Hopefully we never see his son teaming up with him in another movie. On the DVD making-of-featurette, they brag about all the special effects. This movie contains the fakest looking helicopter I have ever seen. At the end all the helicopters are real but it is just stock footage from another movie. This movie is very similar to "Agent Red" with Dolph Lundgren except Derailed lacks the sense of humor.

The movie centers upon Van Damme and his family ( Susan Gibney as wife and his true son ). When in a train happens strange events Jean Claude is helped by a thief spy ( Laura Harring ).

They'll have confront a villain(Tomas Arana) and henchmen who have obtained a lethal virus. In the confrontation the virus outbreaks originating the nightmare .

The runtime film is adjusted : one hour and sixty minutes approx. , it's fast moving and enough bemusing .

From the beginning to the end the action is unstoppable.

In the motion picture there are suspense, emotions, shootouts, pursuits but with little budget , it's a B series movie with less money than Van Damme's previous films .

The storyline is similarly written two films of the 70s and 90s : ¨Cassandra Crossing ( by George Pan Cosmatos )¨and ¨Under Siege 2 ¨ ( Geoff Murphy ), it rips off both movies.

The picture is produced by 777 Films which is Van Damme's property. Also by ¨ Millenniun ¨ the production company in charge of Avi Lerner, Danny Lerner, Boaz Davison and Trevor Short who are making a lot of films in the 90s and 2000s, likeness to ¨Cannon¨(Menahem Golan and Yoran Globus) in the 80s.

The flick will appeal to Van Damme enthusiast and action fans.

Rating: 5/10 average

This is just plain bad, a movie without a single redeeming feature the story is as clichéd as they come imagine Under Siege 2 with added bio-chemical weapons and half the budget. Add some real bad acting from all involved, mix with some cheap MTV style editing that trys to make the film unique but just means you can't see what the hell is going on but then again after 15mins you just wont care whats happening.

I'm going to make a pretty bold statement this is Jean Claude van Dammes worst ever film and thats some statement. J.V.D was never a great actor but he used to make some entertaining enough action flicks (see Kickboxer, Bloodsport etc) but avoid this one like the plague. I don't think there's even one fun action sequence to enjoy.

2/10 - Avoid at all costs.

Forced to conceal his real job from his family, international agent Jacques Kristoff tells them he is taking a train journey with a banking client where really he is escorting the beautiful Galina Konstantin and a biological weapons package to safety across the border. Regardless, his family surprise him on the train, thinking it will be a nice gesture and end up thinking he is having an affair. Before he can apologise and explain, terrorists led by the ruthless Mason Cole seize the train and start hunting for Galina and the virus. With his family in danger and the virus released on board, Jacques must not only stop the terrorists but do so before the Governent take the only available option to stop an outbreak.

Ten years or so is quite a long time. About ten years ago I had just moved to England for the first time and started studying. Since then I've been married, divorced, bought a house, got several jobs and owned one very knackered car. But the mid-nineties must seem even longer ago for Van Damme because then he was having hits like Universal Soldier and Time Cop whereas by 2002 he had sunk to appearing in rubbish like this – not that he was ever a great star but this film is below even him. The plot is a basic rip off of Under Siege 2 crossed with Cassandra Crossing with any sense of fun, excitement or involvement skilfully removed by writers who between them are responsible for other classics include Octopus, Octopus 2: River of Fear (both Davidson) and Crocodile and Crocodile 2: Death Roll (both Anderson). It doesn't help that the man chosen to pull it all together as director is the man who made Shark Attack with lots of stock footage and no thrills.

The plot is messy and pointless – people apparently die then return with no explanation, the action lacks logic and the whole virus thing is just daft. With this type of film this stuff usually can be forgotten if the action is slick and the film is fun to watch; Under Siege 2 is a good example – it is rubbish but I quite enjoyed it so I forgave it. However the action here is poor with basic, uninspiring fights and no real tension; when I saw Van Damme jumping around the train on a motorbike I felt like just turning it off in disgust. The supporting "actors" dying one the train did nothing to make me care one way or the other and the whole thing just felt cheap. The effects make this worse, being as they are a mix of rubbish computer effects or rubbish model work or a rubbish combination of both.

The writing is clunky and full of dialogue that if even a horse spoke it your surprise at a speaking horse would come secondary to the annoyance you feel towards the unconvincing nature of his words. Already hamstrung by this the cast can do nothing to improve the situation; although many of the cast appear perfectly at home at this level. It speaks volumes that Van Damme is actually one of the best performances in the film; he is mean and tough in style – just a shame the action and dialogue are so poor that he can't do anything with it. The rest of the cast are so-so support. We have the tough baddie in a humourless and dour Arana, a sexy female co-star in Harring (who does fill the sexy requirement well), loads of European rent-a-thugs and a train load of hammy dying people including Gibney, Bowman, Van Varenberg (who can kick and can't act, hmmm) and the hilariously named Binky van Bilderbeek, who must have had a lot of fun in his fancy English school as a child.

Overall this shambles is loaded with clichés, bad dialogue, bad direction, cheap effects and bad performances. Fun, excitement, humour, thrills and entertainment all got off at the last stop and nothing of value got on in its place. Even Van Damme fans will be turned off by this rubbish and it is only Steven Seagal fans that should be happy because it at least shows what an entertaining film Under Siege 2 really was.

Bad, bad, bad... This a movie with no story, no acting, no emotions and no sense! It is full of really bad and cheesy special f/x... Why do they insist on making something knowing that they do not have the budget to create them properly. It would have been much better to leave them out completely.

In other, the story is nonsensical, we never get the whys and hows, the science is completely flawed, its just action for the sake of action... The viewer could not care less what will happen to the protagonists most of the time... In other words, a total waste of time. The only reason it gets three stars is that there are even worse movies out there.