Deja Vu (2006)

Posted by fetchblog

June 9, 2008

EVER get that weird feeling you’ve been somewhere before? Well, anyone who’s watched films like Man On Fire or Domino may get such a sensation from Tony Scott’s latest wham-bam action thriller. It’s big, it’s loud and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Déjà Vu offers huge amounts of bang for your buck and, provided you don’t think about the nonsensical plot too much, is a fantastically enjoyable time-travel movie.

We’ve been here before, mind. Fresh from tearing up kidnappers in Scott’s Man On Fire, Denzel Washington returns to play ATF agent Doug Carlin who’s called in to help investigate an explosion onboard a New Orleans ferry. Teaming up with FBI agent Andrew Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer), he’s aided by a supercomputer called Snow White that, through satellite wizardry, allows him to look through a window in time to events four days before. Don’t ask me to explain how it works, but it sure looks fancy.

The idea of being able to solve a mystery and then go back and stop it from happening is a great one and, for a while, Deja Vu rides on the strength of that premise and its star’s prodigious screen charisma. Washington holds the screen as well as anyone from his generation and he has so much talent that he almost sells the material on his star power alone. With a lesser actor in the lead role - we won’t name names, but you can think of a few - Deja Vu would have fallen apart before the quarter mark of its over two-hour running time.

With Denzel, it makes it to at least twice that long before you’ll realize that you just don’t care. Deja Vu is a film made up of questions - Who blew up the boat? How was the woman involved? What are the rules of time travel? - that are far more interesting than the answers and as each question reaches its conclusion and gets wiped off the board, your attention is more likely to wander. Believe it or not, the usually over-the-top Scott would have been served to go a little more off the rails and be even less concerned with plot holes and concrete answers. By staying in the middle and trying to make a traditional thriller with sci-fi elements, he gets stuck there and misses out on the strengths of both genres. Luckily for him, the whole thing’s light enough on its feet and Washington is good enough that it’s a hard movie to hate, just one that’s far too easy to forget.

Denzel Washington…………..Agent Doug Carlin - ATF
Paula Patton………………………………….Claire Kuchever
Val Kilmer……………………..Agent Paul Pryzwarra - FBI
James Caviezel……….Carroll Oerstadt (as Jim Caviezel)
Adam Goldberg……………………….Dr. Alexander Denny
Elden Henson…………………………………………..Gunnars
Erika Alexander…………………………………………..Shanti
Bruce Greenwood…………….Agent Jack McCready - FBI