Déjà Vu (Tony Scott, 2006, USA) May 22, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Uncategorized, 2000s, Film reviews, Action/Adventure, Thriller/Suspense, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Crime , trackbackDir. Tony Scott; screenplay by Bill Marsilii, Terry Rossio; starring Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, Jim Caviezel, Adam Goldberg, Elden Henson, Bruce Greenwood
As the closing credits begin at the end of Déjà Vu, a title appears commemorating the people of New Orleans for their ‘strength and enduring spirit.’ Clearly, the film alludes to those who lost their lives, and the many that tried to save life, after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Yet, the film has more close ties to the unnatural disaster that appeared in New York on the 11th of September 2001, and that eternal question of ‘what if’. What if you could go back in time and stop those planes from taking off? The film shares the sentiments of other time travel movies such as Back To The Future, and more recently, Frequency and Timecop, but at its heart, it’s a quintessential American hero movie. It’s about facing adversity and challenging all the one holds sacred.
After a bomb explodes on a boat in New Orleans, ATF agent Doug Carlin (Washington) begins to investigate, finding some unexplainable ties between himself and one of the female victims. When he learns that she was found dead an hour before the explosion he begins to question the line of enquiry and the FBI invite him to help with their enquiries. He’s introduced to a new piece of technology that allows its viewers to see events as they occurred four and a half days prior. However, they can’t pause or rewind the footage and they can only view events four and a half days before the present day. Therefore, they have to wait until they can watch the footage of the exploding boat. Their job in the mean time is to decide where to look on the boat, and who to look for, as they only get one chance to get it right. But when Carlin realises they can influence the events in the past, stopping the tragedy before it happens becomes his prime objective.
There’s was a moment around the fifty minute mark where I felt the film was being far too complicated for its own good. Scott takes the influences of big brother, CCTV, and government spy satellites one step further from his own 1998 film Enemy Of The State. Here he depicts a way of seeing into the past and uses very specific scientific details to tell us just exactly how it works. However, the threat of total invasion of privacy is quite apparent in Enemy Of The State, the way the government watches the world is believable and based on fact. Déjà Vu bends the rules slightly, taking fact and adding quite a lot of fiction. Certainly when the film really gets going, it’s a roller-coaster of adventurism, explosions, bad guys, and car chases, but Scott never really sets his audience up for the fantasy aspect of his story. Suddenly we are asked to stretch are imagination from a hard-nosed police investigation (with the psychological angle of a cop seemingly breaking down) and a mysterious terrorist threat, to a time-travel fantasy about folding the space-time continuum, Einstein-Rosen bridges, worm holes, Wheeler Boundaries, and EM pulses. When Carlin asks, ‘What if there’s more than physics’, I’m pleading there isn’t. The problem is that it comes out of nowhere, and while it is a twist in the tale, the surprise element is extinguished my confusing science and the attempt to fuse reality with unreality. It’s fundamental storytelling – take for example, Jurassic Park which, setting aside all the marketing campaigns, began by showing us a caged beast attacking game keepers. It set-up what was to come. In Back To The Future, Robert Zemeckis filled the early part of the movie with ‘time’ metaphors, and in Frequency we are introduced to the mystical qualities of the Aurora Borealis and hearing old radio broadcasts. In Déjà Vu, Scott throws in a few red-herrings (the film’s title is a clue, as is Carlin finding a voice recording left by himself, finger prints in a building he never knowingly went to, and a message seemingly addressed to himself) but doesn’t completely set-up the big, time-traveling jolt to the system, and even then, behind all the science, he can’t hide the odd plot hole. While you could argue the plot intricacies make for a more fulfilling second viewing, and in effect, directly set-up what is to come, the film simply does not prepare the viewer for its change of direction. Essentially, I wasn’t ready to suspend my disbelief so suddenly, and it takes some time for everything to position itself back into place.
However, when the movie settles back down, and you take on-board that essentially the film is about influencing events that happened four and half days ago in order to prevent tragedies in the future, there’s enough high-octane thrills to make you forget about any problems you might have with the film’s plot logic. Indeed, while I have reservations about the middle part of the film, the first fifty minutes is intriguing, while the last half hour is thrillingly eventful. A lot of the thanks have to go to Denzel Washington who provides another powerhouse performance, and beautifully grounds the fantastical with a very raw representation of a man desperate to save life.
Déjà Vu might not be as polished as Scott’s Enemy Of The State, or as well-orchestrated as the director’s other collaboration with Washington on Man On Fire, but it’s frequently more enjoyable than Spy Game and Domino. It is at times a little over-complicated with a messy plot but it’s an entertaining action movie that never outstays its welcome.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Comments»
I thought Spy Game was a fine thriller…didn’t watch Domino coz of all the bad reviews…
but i kinda liked Deja Vu.
I thought the film was amazing… and Denzel Washington was amazing! It was really good, it made sense all the way through and although it was complex i was rivted all the way through.
However the only question i asked was why his future self appeared at the end!?
It sort of confused me and i was asking questions? In many ways it makes perfect sense but it also makes no sense and is confusing!
If anyone can provide an explanation i would like to know!?
This movie was doing a Quentin Tarantino which very few reviewers picked up on. What we saw on film was what happened to Doug Carlin up to the FIRST time he stepped into the machine and after he arrived on the gurney the FIFTH time he was sent back. Bear with me on the explanation.
The FIRST time he was sent back, no mention of where he was being sent back to and he did not paint “Revive Me” on his chest. I submit that wherever they sent him he died.
The FBI team found his body and knew what happened. So the second time, and each subsequent time, they painted “Revive Me” on his chest and sent him back to a hospital.
During the “Car Chase”, Doug followed Oerstadt to his house. On the viewer the FBI team saw the house with the ambulance intact in the house. This means that there was a SECOND, THIRD and FOURTH trip back where he failed to stop Oerstadt . I am positing that the second time through Doug and Claire were killed at his house and fed to the Alligators. The ferry explodes.
The THIRD time back Doug was killed and Claire’s body was dumped
2 hours before the detonation time. The Ferry explodes.
The FOURTH time back Doug and Claire made in onto the ferry. Claire turned on the radio in the truck. But, Doug and Claire were killed by Oerstadt on the ferry. Oerstadt gets off the ferry. The ferry explodes.
The FIFTH time back, which we saw on film, Doug found all the stuff he’s tampered with during his previous trips. After the first trip, he was briefed by the FBI team on what happened to him on previous trips just before he’s sent back. He avoids all the previous pitfalls. Remember that this time the ambulance was blown clear out of Oerstadt’s house! He saves Claire, but drowns in the truck after it is run off the ferry. The truck explodes underwater and the ferry is saved. The original Doug meets Claire at the end of the movie. Based on the ending conversation, Claire already knew about the time traveling Doug.
I came to this realization after questioning why 1) Doug would find his bloody clothes in Claire’s apartment, 2) finds the message “You Can Save Her” on the refrigerator, 3) receives a call from Claire. Wouldn’t that mean that the ferry should already have been saved? NO because there were previous trip(s) that failed.
My explanation above accounts for all the things that look like continuity errors.
It is noteworthy that the Doug that was sent back in time wound up being killed. This cleaned up the last paradox of time travel where there is a possibility of two or more Dougs walking the earth.
This was the BIG problem with the television series Seven Days (which Deja Vu is a version of). The series never explained what happened to the duplicate main character after each an every episode. I always felt that when he’s sent back in time, and the problem was resolved, one or the other had to be killed.
@Arthur Ramos Jr.
Ooo, interesting take on the movie.
But, seriously, a “Quentin Tarantino?” Really?
…
Really?
That sounds like an insult. Possibly shorthand for “numbingly derivative” or “written almost entirely by Roger Avary.”
:p