Déjà Vu (2006)
The Cast
Denzel Washington ... Doug Carlin
Paula Patton ... Claire Kuchever
Val Kilmer ... Agent Pryzwarra
James Caviezel ... Carroll Oerstadt
Adam Goldberg ... Denny
Elden Henson ... Gunnars
Erika Alexander ... Shanti
Bruce Greenwood ... Jack McCready
Rich Hutchman ... Agent Stalhuth
Matt Craven ... Minuti
Donna W. Scott ... Beth
Elle Fanning ... Abbey
Since I generally accept that I'm always one of the last people to hear about things, I'm going to assume that everyone knows what a "mash-up" is. In most aspects, Déjà Vu plays like a mash-up of Minority Report with the romantic-dramedy genre. That's pretty much the easiest way to explain the spirit of the movie, without giving anything away. It's also a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced, Tony Scott-directed movie, so you can pretty much expect big explosions and ridiculous fast cuts. What separates Déjà Vu from most Bruckheimer movies is that ... well it's actually kind of smart and should not ever be classified as a brainless popcorn movie.
Everybody loves Denzel stars as Doug Carlin, an ATF agent investigating the explosion of a New Orleans ferry in what appears to be a heinous terrorist attack. Hundreds of people have died, and Carlin ends up focusing on Claire Kuchever (Patton), as her body was found too far away from the explosion site to have actually been part of the ferry attack, yet all physical trauma seems to indicate being part of the tragedy. Revealing his findings to Agent Pryzwarra (Kilmer) - an FBI agent Carlin met earlier that day - eventually leads up to Carlin being brought in on a secret FBI task force. Apparently this task force has developed a bunch of technical jargon that translates to them building a TV that can see back in time four and a half days. That may be over-simplification on my part, but that's the general gist of the science.
This isn't the easiest movie synopsis to explain, which may inadvertently turn off a lot of potential viewers. Carlin is brought in to survey the future crime scenes, to search out clues and suspicious behavior through the WayBack machine. And he's got to be good at it, since the machine always runs four and a half days behind, constantly moving forward as time moves on, Carlin only has one view of everything that has happened. Through viewing the last days of Claire's life, Carlin starts piecing together who was behind the ferry explosion and the earlier murder of Claire. There's not much else I care to reveal since it could be construed as spoilerish, and Déjà Vu is actually quite an interesting thriller to experience.
If this movie were five years old and everyone had seen it, I'd go into greater detail about many of the plot aspects that I particularly enjoyed. Alright, I will let it slip that there's a bit of time travel in the movie and anyone who's read one of my time travel movie reviews knows how I feel about this bit of sci-fi-fantasy. Déjà Vu handles the possibilities of time paradox and twinning timelines in a very sensible manner. Also, while you're first watching the movie you may just become annoyed or enraged at the vague descriptions of the WayBack machine, but the film does a decent job in smoothing out the details so it becomes a bit more plausible.
I thoroughly enjoyed Déjà Vu for everything that it was and for all that it didn't become. There were so many ways to screw this movie up, thankfully none of them actually took place. Scott delivers another solid thriller, Denzel delivers another great leading man performance, Val Kilmer has gracefully evolved into a solid supporting actor, and Adam Goldberg was also pretty good as well. It's one of those films that just seems to fall victim to poor marketing, and one that may even increase in greatness through rewatching.
4 / 5