Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is his name, and he works as an ATF agent in New Orleans. His current assignment is to catch a terrorist who bombed a ferry within the first five minutes of the film (thank God I didn't skip through the opening credits--that might've been the only attention-grabbing scene in the entire
film). He is told about a superb technology that, Doug realizes, can do more than solve the crime: it will allow him to travel back in time to prevent the crime from happening.With such incredible technology as one of the main plot subjects, one would think this film would be fairly short. This runs for a whole two hours, and with all the extraneous scenes it contains, it feels like even longer. In fact, this film makes the average crime mystery TV show, seem like a short video one would find on YouTube.After seeing Denzel Washington and Tony Scott collaborate in UNSTOPPABLE, a slightly more recent film, I couldn't wait to see this film. Scott put the same amount of adrenaline into the production, but he couldn't fit it with the plot. For example: there was great, pulse-pounding music, but rather than being placed in the appropriate scenes, it's placed in scenes depicting Washington's character listening to his voicemail. How many double-takes this film drew from me, I could not count, but the ending drew the most, for sure.Although this film was not interesting, the central concept was. The title may lead you to believe that this film is about time travel, and that's part of it. The technology used to solve crime does many things, such as the basic time travel, as well as the ability to spy on people, pause, rotate the view, and much more. Truly, this is what any FBI agent would want to use to solve a crime, and I applaud the filmmakers for putting their own technology to a purposeful use.If you look at DEJA VU for looks and nothing else, it's amazing. Looking at it from a normal film-watching perspective, this isn't very enjoyable, and it's overly complex. Actually, maybe "complex" isn't the correct word. What I mean to say is that not much is explained at all. Just the slightest explanation fit into the two hours would have brought this from utter disappointment to solidity.Full Review: http://wp.me/p1Urcx-xA
September 7, 2011
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