Tony Scott Knows Action But Not Necessarily Science Fiction

Rating: 8/10 (5 June 2007)

Let's make one thing perfectly clear: director Tony Scott does action. Whether it's TOP GUN or THE LAST BOY SCOUT, he knows how to keep viewers riveted to the screen. He's also worked with the best Hollywood has to offer, from Madeleine Stowe and Gary Oldman to Nicole Kidman and Denzel Washington. This last name is significant since Washington and Scott have worked together on several previously successful film ventures (CRIMSON TIDE and MAN ON FIRE), and come together again with DEJA VU.
More of a science fiction action-drama, Scott dips gingerly into the genre to test its waters utilizing his own unique style. The staged explosions. The high body count. The dessication of morality through characters. It's typical Scott fodder but brandishing the SF genre adequately if somewhat disrespectfully.
There's a lot to like about Deja Vu and one big hunk of burnin' dislike that might make or break it for some viewers (and we'll cover that in a moment). But first, let's look at the film's machinations...
Denzel (INSIDE MAN) stars as Doug Carlin, an investigator for the ATF. He's summoned to a ferryboat explosion in Louisiana and quickly wraps-up evidence regarding its cause: terrorism. Domestic or foreign? We're not sure. But the ferry carried a bunch of navy personnel on shore leave, which brings in the FBI. Specifically, Agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer, 10TH & WOLF), who realizes the brainpower of Carlin (Denzel) and asks him to join his team of experts. Carlin agrees and Pryzwarra takes him to an elaborate mobile facility where "monitoring" equipment takes on surreal proportions. Carlin meets up with the rest of Pryzwarra's crew, Denny (Adam Goldberg), Gunnars (Elden Henson) and Shanti (Erika Alexander), and checks out the new gadgets (involving wormhole/foldspace theory coupled with time-travel).
Carlin isn't immediately let in on how the technology works, but soon surmises that they are looking at the past. Three days past, to be exact. He's also interested in finding out who killed a woman who's body was found several hours before the explosion, burned and battered like the rest of the ferryboat victims but who's time of death doesn't match up. She's a beautiful Louisiana native named Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton, IDLEWILD), and even in death, Carlin is oddly attracted to her. And when he sees her walking around in the FBI's three-days-past time-machine, he knows there's a connection between the bombing and her life.
While checking out her kitchen, Carlin also finds a message on her refrigerator ("U Can Save Her"). Who wrote that and why? How can you save someone who's already dead? Racing against fate, destiny, and lateral time-lines, Carlin boldly goes where no man has gone before. And this is where the hitch comes in. When Carlin offers to risk his life to save Paula, we as the audience are supposed to believe that an entire human body can be transported through time using a machine never designed for such a thing (they send back a piece of paper and, in so doing, use so much of the local power grid that they blackout most of the South). Imagine the power required to send something as complex as a person and you see where the problem lay.
There is one other thing that I have to mention that bugged the crap out of me, and that was the film's title. Deja Vu isn't really mentioned or hit upon until the closing moments, which made me wonder why they gave it its current title. And Deja Vu is more of a feeling and that didn't come through in the movie.
But it was certainly entertaining. Tony Scott has another successful action film on his hands. But you might want to switch-off your overly analytical brain when it comes to the SF elements.