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Denzel’s waste of time
DEJA VU
Directed by Tony Scott
Certificate 12A
DEJA Vu kicks off with a terror attack on a New Orleans ferry. It is blown to smithereens, killing hundreds of unfortunate passengers.
Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington, pictured) is on the case, and discovers not all is what it seems. One victim of the blast is found so far away from the actual incident, he thinks she might have some how been killed before the bomb went off. Her burned body is pulled from the waters in a place that the tide could not have taken her.
Clever old Doug surmises that who ever planted the bomb killed poor Claire first – but the question is, why?
At this point, we lurch from a simple detective story in to the realms of sci-fi.
It so transpires that the FBI have a new device on their side in the war on terror. The super-boffins, working for the government and headed by Val Kilmer have built themselves a spy satellite with a difference – it can zoom into the past and can see what happened, at any place in the past four-odd days.
Agent Carlin has the idea of following the victims last days hoping for the break that will lead to the bomber – but our hero Doug finds himself falling for the unfortunate lady (Paula Patton), even though they have yet to meet. It prompts him to use the system to get back in time and try and save this girl from her fate.
Throw in the usual car chases, a lot of technobabble, some big explosions and lots of shots of Denzel Washington looking perturbed and you have the main thread that holds this thriller together.
This idea of going back in the past to stop terrible future events has been covered many times before, and while it has a hint of HG Wells about it, I’d much prefer to watch the antics of Marty McFly and Doctor Everett Brown use time travel than the US Government. Shot in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina, the question occasionally arises in the mind how handy it would have been to have known quite how bad the storm would be for the city.
Is this a subversive way of Hollywood saying the federal government didn’t do enough to help the people living there when the hurricane was on its way?
Using footage of the aftermath brings home quite how horrible it was. That may be giving the film a little more intelligence than it deserves.
Washington does his best with a laboured script that tries to explain how all this stuff works.
A waste of time – fans of this type of film want some fast moving action and thrills, of which there are enough to satisfy. But the whole idea gives me the creeps, something the film does unintentionally as we are supposed to be on the side of the time travelling peeping toms. |
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