Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #884 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-05-14
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In his most effective thriller since Enemy of the State, Tony Scott makes time travel seem plausible. It helps that his New Orleans hero, ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington in his third go-round with the director), spends more time in the present than the past. In order to catch a terrorist, FBI Agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) invites Carlin to join forces. They have the technology to see the past. He has the expertise to interpret the data. Unfortunately, the bomb has already gone off and hundreds of ferry passengers have died. Then there's the body of a beautiful woman, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton, Idlewild), that turns up in the vicinity of the blast. Evidence indicates she was killed beforehand. Since the FBI enables him to observe Claire prior to her murder, Carlin gets to know what she was like and finds himself falling in love. He becomes convinced that the only way to solve the case--and prove her innocence--is to travel to the past. But as Pryzwarra's colleague, Denny (Adam Goldberg), argues, "You cannot go back in time. It's physically impossible." Or so he says. Déjà Vu is constructed around a clever script and executed by a top-notch cast, notably Washington, Patton, and an eerie Jim Caviezel (miles away from Passion of the Christ). In shedding the excesses of recent years--the sadism of Man on Fire and weirdness of Tarantino favorite Domino--Scott re-affirms his rep as one of the action movie's finest practitioners. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Synopsis
When a New Orleans ferry carrying 500 passengers is destroyed by a bomb, Doug Carling; a newly-recruited FBI agent is drafted in to track down the perpetrator. When a body is found floating in the river, it is determined that the victim was murdered before the ferry blast occurred. Unfortunately, the victim was the impossibly beautiful Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), whose death has begun to torment Carlin. Adding a new level to the investigation is a top-secret FBI invention, which allows a select group to view the past on screen as if it had been videotaped days earlier. The more Carlin sees of Kuchever, the more connected to her he becomes, until he decides to risk his life by travelling back in time and altering the course of history.

Customer Reviews

DeJavu - can i get the last 2 hours back
i'm a big fan of denzel washington, so i was looking forward to this film after having read the blurb on the dvd cover. the tagline on the cover asks "What if you could change the past?". my first thought after i'd watched this film was if i could change the past, i would have saved the last 121 minutes by not watching this nonsensical drivel. sory denzel, not this time

Pretty Poor
In the beginning of what appears at first glance to be a well constructed thriller, Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance) seems to very carefully lay a number of important building blocks in place. I was impressed with the first half hour of so of the movie, one I wished to see because, in spite of some turkeys, Tony Scott has turned in some great pieces too. Once the sci-fi element was unravelled, the scripting went to great pains to make suspension of disbelief as easy as possible on the part of the viewer, once again a point for the movie-makers.

It wasn't long, however, before the whole thing just descended into an absurd action mish mash, the viewer's credulity being stretched further every moment, and seemed to abandon the carefully constructed base on which it was built in favour of mediocre visuals and irregular pacing. Add to this an ordinary performance from Denzel Washington (not that he had much to work with), and a comprehensively phoned in performance from Val Kilmer (he didn't have much to work with, but he didn't even bother using that), and all in all you've got a fairly hopeless result. I gave it two stars because the first half hour proved that there was probably a decent film in there somewhere. Sadly though, no-one in the production team showed any interest in freeing it.

Disappointing. Try Frequency if you like time travel detective films.
This should be the sort of film I enjoy - a bit of science fiction plus some mystery and a bit of detective work. Alas, It failed to live up to expectations. Not wishing to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it already, I won't go into detail with the plot, aside from saying it doesn't quite add up, and it doesn't seem to try very hard to do so. There is also a rather extended car chase (albeit with a temporal twist) with multiple pile-ups which stretches credibility to breaking point.

Denzel Washington is as ever very watchable but even he seems a little unconvinced at times. Paula Patton is passable, but could have done with tighter direction in places. Jim Caviezel has appeared in a much classier time travel film (Frequency, with Dennis Quaid - well worth a look!).

To sum up then, nice idea but doesn't really work.