peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2023 07 19 DejaVu

Deja Vu (2006)

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A Tony Scott/Jerry Bruckheimer jag from Enemy of the State. I should've read the tin more closely as this is more-or-less Minority Report smoodged together with Terminator (etc): yes, time-travel surveillance with an indestructible male lead. Poor old Denzel Washington does what he can, mostly just by running with it. Minor banana Val Kilmer can only nod along. Jim Caviezel is far better as a naif (cf The Thin Red Line) than a Kaczynski. Also Bruce Greenwood.

Basically the plot has a domestic terrorist (eventually Caviezel) blow up a ferry full of US Navy sailors and their families near the ports of New Orleans for reasons unstated. In this reality America has the technology for a do over and obviously the related murder of too-pretty Paula Patton cannot be let stand. There's excess useless exposition about the McGuffin, and I doubt anyone was sufficiently invested to determine if it hangs together like Predestination. Denzel senselessly takes a few as the nonsense is piled high. Referring to real American tragedies in this way was doubtlessly crass and inconsiderate at the time this was released.

Manohla Dargis: nutty and unreal, vulgar shots of "decimated" post-Katrina New Orleans. Laura. Caviezel as De Niro or Mel Gibson. Stephanie Zacharek. Peter Bradshaw: this movie "actually implies that only Americans are equal to the task of successfully attacking other Americans."