Dïjà Vu
Review by Steven D. Greydanus | posted 11/22/2006
 1 of 4
"If you thought it was just a trick of the mind, prepare yourself for the truth," promises the tagline for Déjà Vu. Yet if the movie's fantasy premise purports to offer an "explanation" for one of those nagging, inexplicable impressions we sometimes get, it isn't so much the sense of something having happened before, but rather the creepy feeling that somehow, even in our most private moments, we are being watched.
True, Déjà Vu deals with timelines revisited, events seen and reseen from different points of view, and ultimately the growing sense that all of this has been before. Indeed, the film involves some of the most intricately interconnected time-bending plotting seen in years, with a tightly looped storyline that carefully sets up a long chain of dominoes that have already been toppled. "You don't have to do this," a character tells ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) at a critical juncture, to which he replies, "What if I already have?"
Denzel Washington as ATF agent Doug Carlin
Even some viewers may have a feeling of déjà vu, what with odd bits of God talk and spiritual references juxtaposed with fingers being lopped off, duct-taped faces and prisoners with hands affixed to steering wheels, a kidnapped damsel in deadly distress, and deadly explosions, all in a hypercaffeinated Tony Scott thriller starring a sunglasses-wearing Denzel Washington, set in a down-and-out Mexican/Gulf area city, and featuring a quasi-christological climax.
No, it's not the odious Man on Fire all over again—fortunately, it's quite a bit better than that. To begin with, this time it's the bad guy blowing people up, which is always a good thing. Beyond that, Déjà Vu pursues its science-fiction conceit to some nifty places, including an extraordinary cross-temporal chase scene in which the hero must negotiate traffic in one timeframe while "following" a vehicle more than half a week in the past. Are you thinking fourth-dimensionally yet?
Responsible for all this is a top-secret FBI surveillance technology that—according to the official explanation offered to Carlin—reconstructs an on-the-fly virtual view of the recent past by synthesizing input from all available sources, from satellite photography to local security cameras, into a single, continuous roving image of life as it was four and a half days earlier.
Doug speaks with FBI agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer)
Thus, when post-Katrina New Orleans is rocked by a terrorist bomb, the FBI sets up shop and starts combing through images of the days before the blast for clues. Although Carlin is a lowly ATF officer, an FBI agent named Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) admires his efficient detective work and recruits him to go over the surveillance images with them. "I need someone who can look at a crime scene exactly once," Pryzwarra says, "and tell us what shouldn't be there, what's missing, what matters."
He isn't kidding about the "exactly once" part. Within their surveillance radius, the FBI team can see literally anything happening four days ago—even looking through walls, a bit like in Scott's earlier Enemyof the State, thus allowing agents to peer in on the last hours of a murder victim named Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) as she changes clothes, showers and so forth. All the time, though, the past marches on as relentlessly as the present, and there's a complicated, possibly disingenuous technobabble explanation for why there are no do-overs, no rewinding, no fast-forwarding.
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