“Derailed” is one of those movies about beautiful people who have relatively good lives but, through some means or another, end up having extremely bad things happen to them.

The audience knows the characters will end up in unfortunate situations with their lives disrupted, suddenly taking off down another track, and yet, they can’t help but watch.

In this case, Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston play Charles Schine and Lucinda Harris, two business executives who meet by chance on the train on the way to work in Chicago. They are immediately attracted to each other, and it’s not long before they start seeing each other outside of their daily commute.

They are both hesitant to start an extramarital affair but not reluctant enough to keep from going to a hotel on a whim. Then everything goes horribly wrong. A man breaks into their hotel room, mugs Schine and knocks him unconscious before raping Harris. Worse yet, their ordeal doesn’t end there, when the mugger begins calling Schine and blackmailing him for money.

It is not as if these characters have absolutely perfect lives anyway. Schine’s daughter suffers from diabetes, and he and his wife have been saving money for years to pay for her medication and dialysis. Harris barely sees her husband and, after going to the police, is at risk of losing custody of her daughter if her husband finds out about her affair.

“Derailed” is set up as a Hitchcock film would be, complete with elements of film noir. The story fits into the category of “guilty adulterers who have to face their sins,” but it is not about poetic justice being delivered.

In one way or another, no character completely receives his or her just desserts, whether punishment or reward. It is a classic sort of thriller with a big twist about the characters, but it still can’t quite pull off the story the way Hitchcock could.

Part of the reason it doesn’t run as smoothly as it could is that the characters falter right when they need the viewers’ support the most.

Without giving away the turning point of the story, Schine’s and Harris’s guilt quickly turn into something else entirely, and with it, they lose the audience’s sympathy.

That being said, however, both Owen and Aniston still provide intriguing characters. In this type of movie, it is best to forget that most of what happens is illogical, because much of the action only serves as plot devices to a familiar ending. (Almost no one could have as much luck and misfortune as Owen’s character experiences.) A lot, therefore, rests on the characters.

Aniston is alluring without being too seductive, and Owen is a pensive yet formidable on-screen presence.

“Derailed” jumps the track a bit in story when it reveals its big secret. Because of its strong setup and middle action, though, it manages to make its way back in the right direction. Even though the audience knows where it is headed, they still stay on board for the ride.