Deja Vu

Despite the unpleasantly fairy-tale ending, the pros prevail. The ultra-sympathetic Denzel Washington, who thinks like all the CSI members put together, the delicious James Caviezel, the likeable and funny scientists... And above all, the unmistakable bombastic direction of Tony Scott. The scene in which a man driving in a car watches a car driving on the same road that he drove on four days earlier is top-notch. Not to mention the introduction. I'm rounding up three and a half for all the entertainment. (09/25/2012)

What is interesting about Déjà Vu is primarily how its screenplay provides the ideal framework for director Tony Scott’s stylistic development. After the extravagant Domino, in which the unreliable narrator gave space to spectacular formal flamboyance, Scott’s upcoming project gives the impression of being a sort of calming. However, by combining various cameras, materials, shooting speeds and post-production processes, the director found an ideal application for playing with the impression of the moment in Déjà Vu’s narrative, which in the essential middle part works with the possibility of looking into time running in the past while changing points of view. In its peak scenes, the film brings a wildly fragmented view of two different time planes running concurrently, but thanks to the visual stylisation, the viewer never gets lost even for a moment. Domino and Déjà Vu together represent the two highlights of Scott’s late-period filmography, where in the respective screenplays he had the ideal framework for his formal experiments – in one case, unbridled wildness in the interest of increasing the expressiveness and delirium of the narrative and, in the other case, the paradoxical use of those elements for maximum clarity and a credible display of the fantastical aspects of intersecting time planes. (11/17/2020)

Tony Scott abandoned his epileptic camera manias that bogged down the otherwise impeccable Domino and took on a script that may look original, but some of us have had the privilege before, including bending paper to explain a space-time jump (remember Event Horizon?). Some may legitimately find the whole plot terribly wacky, others may not like the incongruous combination of crime and sci-fi, but in any case Scott has made an easily digestible flick that is nice to watch, good for eating popcorn and out of your head before you can say "deja-vu". And it's a pity that, given the development of the plot, I had already figured out the only possible resolution half an hour before the end. (04/09/2007)

I was beginning to worry that Tony would never shoot anything in “ordinary" style, but in Déja Vu we are back on the level of let’s say Enemy of the State. The screenplay manages to keep the viewer glued to the screen and even though it looks complicated, it is quite simple, fortunately lacking the nowadays-so-common glitches. Although Denzel Washington is playing the role of a cop again, I must say he is still fine here, just cool in different way. I must say the film has really good vibes and I would gladly watch it again sometime. Mainly the time travel chase in the souped up Humvee is a work of a genius :). (06/05/2007)

Old masters Jerry Bruckheimer and Tony Scott created a hybrid of Van Damme’s Timecop and Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. The great Denzel Washington heroically shoots his way through the film, which can boast precise filmmaking and a great number of screenwriting ideas, but unfortunately suffers from just as many lapses in logic, including the biggest one, connected to the excessively romantic (but emotionally pleasant) happy ending. Déjà Vu is a pleasant, relaxing film that you shouldn’t overthink. (06/17/2007)