Deja Vu

I realized when I got home from the screening of Deja Vu that I hadn't ever seen a Tony Scott movie in the cinema. Not one. He has always shot movies of the "wait for dvd" mould. They always looked fun and full of action but from the trailer they never seem to have any substance. When I do get round to seeing his films on dvd, I do normally like them though. He very rarely lets me down. Something in the trailer of Deja Vu looked different than his others this decade. Sure it was still sugarcoated in the usual action shots we get from Scott but there seemed to be something else at work here. And as the holiday season has nothing but crap in the theatre (we ain't got Apocalypto or Rocky yet) I decided to give it a go. The end result? I liked it! I liked it no more than the Tony Scott moviesI wait for on dvd, but yet again he is "Mr. Consistent" and has delivered a solid, entertaining action movie with a tad more substance than usual. The film follows his regular star Denzel Washington as a cop investigating the terrorist bombing of a ferry full of hundreds of navy passengers, their families and mysteriously the murder of a young women who medical records suggest was killed some time before the explosion. He gets assigned to a crack team of surveillance (led by the rather overweight looking Val Kilmer) that unbelievably have found the technology to watch past events in real time from any conceivable angle anywhere in the New Orleans area. They can look inside people's homes, watch people have showers or talk on the phone, all with satellites up in the sky. I haven't felt so uneasy watching a movie since Scott did a similar thing with his satellites in Enemy of the State. However with all good technology, there is a catch. The past events are all from 4 days ago, they can't fast forward, or rewind. They can only view the past in real time and although they can record what they see, it's only from the camera angles they are shooting at the time. Still with me? As soon as this was revealed in our cinema's I heard a loud groan. Especially from Dan and Peter but I stuck with it. Ya wanna know why? Denzel's line about the acceptance we have with technology that allows us to speak to anyone anywhere in the world instantly with a mobile phone. Sure he doesn't know how it works, but he knows it can be done so he accepts it. And if your seeing Deja Vu in the cinema, that's what you have to do. Accept it and move on. More developments are made in the plot that I won't spoil, but like all good popcorn flicks it never gets too complicated and they do a good job of helping you understand how this time travel works. This makes the movie very dialogue heavy, kinda like The Da Vinci Code, but I liked that and I think it's because I'm a big fan of books and that's how characters talk in literature form. I know it's a movie but the "show don't tell" theory doesn't always apply to some stories. Denzel Washington has never been better in a Tony Scott film, he plays a character that has such an emotional weight on his shoulders and he is desperate to solve the case of the dead women he becomes obsessed with. Jim Caviezel, after playing Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, totally goes in another direction here playing the villain terrorist. He was absolutely badass! One of my favourite villain performances this year, he reminded me of Tom Cruise in Collateral because like him he is playing a character that doesn't actually believe he is the villain.

rating: 3.5

Plot holes a plenty in the third act but you have to admire the film for having the balls to try to do something different with the rigid action movie formula and it succeeds enough to be called a good movie.