DEJA VU

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Touchstone Pictures
Grade: C
Directed by: Tony Scott
Written By: Bill Marsilii, Terry Rossio
Cast: Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, Jim
Caviezel, Adam Goldberg, Elden Henson, Erika Alexander
Screened at: Regal E-Walk, NYC, 11/16/06
Opens: November 22, 2006

The French term "Deja vu" means "already seen," but the title of
Tony Scott's movie, produced by the inimitable Jerry
Bruckheimer, is misleading. There is no examination here of
the neurological phenomenon that occasionally makes us think,
"Hey, I've been here before! I've done this before!" Instead, Bill
Marsilii and Terry Rossio's screenplay involves a trip four days
into the past with a time machine, a new device that a federal
agency is using sub rosa with the understanding that "you can
go back and alter the past somewhat, but you cannot change it."
Scott's picture could have been called "The Time Machine," but
not only has that renowned title already been taken but "Deja
Vu" cannot be placed by a long shot into the prestigious spot
occupied by Jules Verne. For that matter, speaking of time
machines, you can't do much better with that motif than was
done by Gregory Hoblit in "Frequency," in which a lad goes back
thirty years to save his father form a fire. For a real feeling of
going back every day to the previous one, and one with
incredibly good comic touches, go with Hal Ramis's "Groundhog
Day," in which Bill Murray's character relives a day over and
over.

Tony Scott's picture combines a police thriller with a sci-fi motif
and a romance, but even more unbelievable than the return to
the past of an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and
Tobacco is the idea that Doug Carlin, this ATF agent played by
the always charming Denzel Washington, falls in love with a
dead woman he had never seen before he looks her over on a
slab at New Orleans' city morgue. Necrophilia is always a
fascinating theme.

Since this is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, you get car
chases, auto crashes and explosions. Unless you're a lifelong
resident of North Korea, you've seen them a hundred times, if
not on the screen, then on your Play Station. There's not a
single such blast here that can excite your fantasies. The story
finds Carlin looking into an explosion of a ferry in New Orleans,
one taking a crew of hundreds of sailors and children from the
Louisiana port of Algiers into the city to the tune of (duh) The
Saints Go Marching In. FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer), who
may have been fitted with a fat suit, tells Carlin that a woman
was found dead in the water before the explosion. Since this
victim, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) is a looker, Carlin is in
love and will do anything to reverse the tragedy of that fateful
day to bring her in alive. If he can save the lives of the five
hundred or so sailors and others on the ferry, that would be a
plus as well.

Introduced to a stunning hi-tech lab of surveillance machines,
one that can actually hone in on a single home and watch
women taking showers, Carlin is more interested in the time
machine, in which he can catch the Timothy McVeigh-type
terrorist, Carroll Oerstadt (Jim Caviezel), before the lad playing
against his Jesus-type can do the foul deed.

The movie is predictable, using the hoary strain of racing
against the clock to defuse or render a bomb impotent, but
whether or not you can suspend disbelief to witness a fellow
reversing much of the past by traveling therein, the real problem
is that the pic lacks suspense, a romance the slightest bit
convincing, and more than a touch of originality.

Rated PG-13. 122 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online