Review of Déjà Vu (2006) by Xgary X — 24 Feb 2010

Denzel plays his usual mild mannered but earnest supercop investigating a terrorist attack on a ferry who becomes part of a government team who can look through a window onto 4 days in the past. In other words, Minority Report for the past instead of the future.

It's one of those films that has that kind of mind bending time paradox plot that tends to be quite entertaining if you like trying to figure out if the script writer actually thought the idea through properly, using the prerequisite science mumbo jumbo to try and explain it all, but of course it's all nonsense so you have to either accept it or not.

James Caviezel makes decent baddie and is at home in time travelling wish fulfilment territory starring as he did in Frequency a few years earlier and it's pretty much the usual slick Hollywood blockbuster you'd expect (although I was quite grateful for the fact that Tony Scott dials down his trademark cine-wanking to the point where it's almost bearable).

It takes itself rather more seriously than Nic Cage vehicle Next but is otherwise very similar; in fact it leaves you with exactly the same Chinese food feeling that makes it reasonably enjoyable while it's on but afterwards you don't really feel like you've witnessed anything of consequence.