Deja Vu

I won't argue with anyone that the script is total phantasmagoria, but no one can tell me that Tony Scott has no competition in the field of "high-speed". Such visual lipstick, which he paints with cinematographer Paul Cameron, would be the envy of the entire cosmetics industry. The plot moves along briskly and, aware of its simplicity, at times goes so far that you wait for Denzel Washington to wink lasciviously not only at his colleagues but also at the viewer through the camera. The only problem may seem to be the ending, but the way the screenwriter duo navigates the trade-off between choosing between fate and pandering to an audience hungry for uniform outcomes is actually to be applauded. This is a twisted and funnier variation on Minority Report, which wins points over Spielberg for me. (26/01/2009)

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. (17/11/2020)

Déjà Vu was a very pleasant surprise. At first I was actually thrilled with the idea and the way it’s executed. By the middle, however, the script takes a turn to Hollywood mainstream, the logic gets lost and my enthusiasm waned. When it comes to time travel, it prefers a “whatever happened happened” approach to a “you can change everything” one, but I still think it’s a very well made film that’s worth watching. (29/08/2010)

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. (09/04/2007)

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. (17/06/2007)