Good Entertaining Movie

Rating: Null/10 (20 January 2008)

"But.if she was saved and they didn't find her burned, mutilated body on the riverbank, how did he know to go back in time and save her, he wouldn't have gone to her apartment ..?" "And if the guy wasn't on the bridge but went back to the ferry and got shot, then..". "Umm, yes, but remember time is a braided river, heading ever onwards towards the ocean. Or something."
These were only a sample of several similar conversations my husband and I had after watching this movie on DVD. It's a pretty good movie. Not a classic, not a great movie, and of course the whole premise is hokum, but it's pretty well written, well acted and well filmed. I would expect no less from a combination of Denzel Washington and Tony Scott. I suspect that two middle aged codgers like us, are well past the age of the target audience, hence our need to mull over the plot afterwards! Washington is a good actor who seems to be without pretense. Every film I have seen him in, he gives an honest and totally committed performance. I loved him in Inside Man, which was one of the most underrated movies of 2006 in my opinion. He was, perhaps, less successful in American Gangster, if only because he seems to play a goodie more convincingly than a baddie.
In Déjà Vu, as Agent Doug Carline, he goes back in time to try to prevent a terrorist attack on a ferry boat on the Mississippi, and to catch the terrorist. In the process he falls in love with a woman he first encounters as a corpse at the beginning. The necessary technobabble was slickly done, and the special effects were good without being overdone. The supporting cast were all more than adequate, and the story had a satisfying conclusion. Not the kind of movie to win any awards, but the kind that keeps people turning up on a Friday night to fill the movie theatres.
Oh yes! And the rather gratuitous shots of victim Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) in her bra and then naked in the shower were nicely balanced by several equally gratuitous shots of Denzel without his shirt, so happiness all round. I'm a great believer in equal opportunity in sexploitation.