Monday, September 10, 2007

Deja Vu


DÉJÀ VU opens with a terrorist’s bomb blowing up a crowded ferry crossing the Mississippi River at New Orleans, killing more than five hundred people. Denzel Washinton plays an ATF agent helping to investigate this atrocity, and when he gets a call from the morgue about a female victim who washed ashore, evidently having been killed in the blast, he discovers that she actually died before the explosion and realizes that things aren’t as simple as they appear to be.

This movie starts out as a well-done but fairly typical feds-on-the-trail-of-the-terrorist thriller, but the more evidence Washington’s character uncovers, the weirder things get. Then the story takes a decidedly science-fictional turn. I can’t say much more about the plot without ruining things for those of you who haven’t seen the film. There’s nothing here that will come as much of a surprise to anybody who’s seen or read very many near-future scientific thrillers, but it’s handled pretty well, with good action scenes, some likable characters, and the sort of semi-plausible scientific gibberish that’s always good for a grin. I’m not very fond of director Tony Scott’s jumpy style, but he keeps it under control fairly well in this film. DÉJÀ VU is a pretty entertaining couple of hours.

4 comments:

Vince said...

I enjoyed this one, too. I'm sure it falls apart if you think about it. My solution: don't think about it. It's worth watching for the car chase alone.

James Reasoner said...

I've found that the secret to enjoying many movies (and books, for that matter) is the ability to say, "Oh. Okay."

Randy Johnson said...

Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out. On an aside, I just saw Brick. Interesting noir film with a high school setting. It worked for me.

Mark Terry said...

I liked this one a lot, although I agree with Vince that too much thought shouldn't be made afterwards. But then again, that's true of almost everything in SF and techthriller-dom.

I agree, I thought the car chase was pretty cool (I'm something of a fan of when movies utilize a kind of "alternate POV" sort of technique--for instance, if you watch "U.S. Marshals" which is an otherwise pretty mediocre Tommy Lee Jones film, I really enjoyed when they analyzed the surveillance tapes of the original killing from about 8 different camera angles. I just thought that was cool.).

I also think Denzel Washington always brings something extra to whatever film he's in.