Film Muser

Film Muser Rating : 2 / 5
Release Date : November 22, 2006
Running Time : 128 minutes

I was looking forward to Deja Vu when I first saw the previews late in 2006. When a movie involves time travel, federal agents, and big explosions you can usually count me in. To top it all off the film stars one of my favourite actors Denzel Washington, who plays an ATF agent Doug Carlin, who investigates a terrorist attack in New Orleans involving a ferry. As Carlin follows lead after lead, he garners the attention of a top secret government agency that eventually recruits him for his keen eye. It turns out that this secret agency is also investigating the ferry terrorist attack, but they have much more elaborate methods of going about it.

It turns out that some scientists accidentally discovered a way to fold space in on itself, and are essentially able to create a wormhole. By peering through the Einstein-Rosen bridge, the investigators are able to see back in time exactly four and a half days anywhere in the “field of view”. They are unable to fast forward or rewind where their wormhole is pointed - they can simply watch events unfold as they did four and a half days earlier. With the current setup, the investigators have the task of making educated guesses as to what location to watch in order to gain evidence in solving a crime. This is why they wanted to bring Carlin on board - he seemed to have a knack for following leads.

As usual Denzel Washington puts in a strong performance even though he isn’t playing the most interesting or complex character. In the film he becomes enamored with a casualty of the terrorist attack who he believes is the key to solving the case. He is teamed up with Agent Pryzwarra, played by Val Kilmer, who is heading up the special “temporal team”. Pryzwarra seems nothing more than a character that is there to explain what is going on to the audience. Him, and the rest of his team, make the entire apparatus function, but they all feel nothing more than placeholders.

This film didn’t really do anything that hasn’t already been done before. All of the neat paradoxical scenarios that time travel can create seem to have been recycled from other movies like 12 Monkeys” or even Star Trek episodes like Times Arrow from The Next Generation series. I was quite disappointed that nothing new was explored.

Another problem I had with this film is that they insist on adding repetitive dialog to help people understand what is going on. I understand that the topic of time travel can be pretty confusing, but do you really need to explain something five times, and hold the audience’s hand through scenes? For people who are actually paying attention when watching the movie, one explanation should be enough. If people are busy getting a popcorn refill, or chatting with their neighbour - tough luck. I’ve noticed a lot of movies doing this lately, and it is really starting to get annoying.

The movie does have decent action sequences, and the time travel dilemmas are fun to work out as the movie progresses. It really can make your head spin when you start to think about some of this stuff, and that is always entertaining. It’s just a shame that the story was so “been there done that”, and somewhat predictable. This film has recently been released on DVD, and if nothing else is available, this can serve as a good mindless action flick.

Memorable Scene
Since the “wormhole generator” is limited to a specific range, they have developed a mobile version of the technology in the form of goggles. When you look through the goggles, you are actually seeing four and a half days in the past. At one pint, Carlin and his team are tracking the terror suspect, but he is traveling towards the border of the hot zone. Carlin jumps in a Hummer with the “mobile wormhole” and rips around the freeway trying to track the terrorist’s movements of four days ago. Since everything he is viewing through the goggles is as it was four days ago, Carlin has a real tough time negotiating with present time traffic.