DVD Releases and News

DVD Review: "Deja Vu"

"Deja Vu" has a lot going for it right out of the gate. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Tony Scott, with Denzel Washington as your lead man. All they needed was a clever premise to get the three heavyweights working together, and box office gold was sure to follow. But did this trifecta powerhouse homogenize well, or were we left with a bunch of pieces that had no business fitting together into one coherent whole?

Playing with time in movies is a tricky affair. You have to at once puzzle audiences enough to keep them intrigued, while keeping plot twists simple enough to not lose everyone in the theater (or in this case, everyone lounging about on their couches). Just ask the recent "Premonition" on how quickly things can go afoul. Walking the fine line of confusion / mystery with skill can make your movie a viral event, evoking conversations (and thus recommendations to others) long after the movie ends.

Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) plays an ATF agent who investigates a horrific explosion aboard a New Orleans ferry on Mardi Gras. Immediately we get a sense that Carlin is a badass in his field (would you expect anything else with Denzel in the role?). After several curious clues turn up in the investigation, an off-the-record F.B.I. team takes Carlin into their fold to help solve what has become labeled a terrorist incident.

As part of the team, Carlin is introduced to a state-of-the-art bit of technology that is first explained away as advanced satellite imaging. Carlin realizes something is amiss, however, and eventually goads the team into revealing the secret of their technology - somehow they've developed a time-folding machine that allows them to observe the past - but only four days previous. The team, assisted by the sharp-witted Carlin, uses the technology to follow the previous days' events as they unfold in the hopes of finding clues that will lead them to the terrorist.

Writing this, we can almost picture everyone at home saying, "What the hell?" It seems kind of half-baked on paper, and in amateur hands, this movie could have gone down a path of mind-numbing confusion that would have left the audience too perplexed to know whether they liked the film or not. But Tony Scott knows what a summer blockbuster is (it wasn't his fault it was released near Thanksgiving!), and he delivers again with a film that feels like a Heinlein short story, managing to wrap a tricky time travel premise into a palatable popcorn thriller.

If we had one issue with the flick, it would be the glazing over of the science fiction elements of the film. While we wouldn't want it to turn into a Star Trek techno-babble-fest any more than the next guy, the writers needed to give us something more than "oh look our neat time travel thingie, and here's a quick 5 second recap of all time-travel theories - and now back to our regularly scheduled plot." Even so, as 'deja vu' kicks in for the audience, we couldn't help but smile at the clever touches pieced together by the writers/director as the time travel events unfold.

"Deja Vu" may not be your heady scifi, a la "Children of Men" (boy did that ever kick our ass), but it does evoke that feeling so rare these days in film-watching: an instant desire to replay it to see what you missed the first time.

SPECIAL FEATURES

- SURVEILLANCE WINDOW
Kind of a cool way to blend director's commentary with behind-the-scenes featurettes. The only downside to this is that you have to watch the whole movie again to catch all the content.

- DELETED SCENES
There are 5 deleted scenes included on the disc. Most of these are extended versions of already existing scenes, and mostly throw-aways.

- EXTENDED SCENES
There are three "extended scenes," and could have just as easily been lumped into the above category. Again, mostly throw-aways.

Movie grade: B
DVD Grade: B

"Deja Vu" explodes onto DVD shelves (the first time!) on April 24th.