It’s crazy to think that a thriller as bonkers as Tony Scott‘s Déjà Vu was green-lit by a major studio, let alone made over $180 million worldwide. Beyond its time-traveling plot and god-level technical craftsmanship, though, Scott focuses the hyperactive, super-saturated thriller style he perfected in Man on Fire on grounded, moving performances and his characters’ subjective experience. Firing on all cylinders as well is Denzel Washington in a heart-melting turn as ATF agent Doug Carlin, who starts off trying to stop a terrorist bombing that already happened and ends up falling in love with a woman he may never meet, but feels compelled to save.
The film’s futuristic take on deep-state surveillance rings just as true today as it did in 2006 (and Scott’s own 1998 thriller Enemy of the State), but it’s the romance of Déjà Vu that really stands the test of time. With a craftsman like Tony Scott behind the lens, the unlikely formula of sci-fi Vertigo turns out to be pure magic — and it boasts one of Washington’s most engaging turns.
Denzel Washington Gives One of His Most Underrated Performances in ‘Déjà Vu’
Déjà Vu opens with a horrific New Orleans bombing, subject matter that likely hit even harder for audiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a haunting sequence that lingers just enough on the death and destruction to leave a searing impression, feds fan out to search for survivors. A single anomaly catches Carlin’s eye: the body of a woman who apparently died in the blast, but was found before it even happened.
Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) becomes an object of obsession for Carlin, as he utilizes a classified federal surveillance program that gives agents a window into the past. In a series of technically accomplished, Hitchcockian scenes, Carlin observes Kuchever’s daily life from the future, until he begins to fall in love — and the film takes a turn toward time-travel sci-fi.
Washington’s authoritative presence and warmth sell the mind-bending race to both stop the bomb and save the woman he’s falling for. And Tony Scott’s focus on layered and fractured images turns Déjà Vu from a blockbuster thriller into something far more abstract and emotional.
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Washington not only beat Liam Neeson to the punch but cemented his own action star status.
Why ‘Déjà Vu’s Time-Bending Car Chase Still Tops Modern Action Movies
Arguably, the centerpiece of Déjà Vu, an all-timer of a car chase, plays out in two time periods simultaneously, with Washington tracking a car four days in the past, using a pair of sci-fi goggles while racing through traffic.
Scott executes the sequence in a wild, jittery mixture of sepia-tinged past footage, current vehicular carnage, images being watched by Washington’s team back in the control room, and close-ups on their terrified faces. But it all gels beautifully thanks to pure craft. When Scott pauses long enough to show a past version of Caviezel seeming to leer at present-day Carlin as a frame-within-a-frame, the audience loses its breath, too. And it’s a microcosm of the magic trick Scott and Washington are pulling off for Déjà Vu‘s whole two-hour runtime.
The sheer momentum of the sequence, plus the outrageously complex layers of action the audience is being asked to digest easily catapults the chase among cinema’s all-time greats, from The French Connection to Mad Max: Fury Road. Most of all, Scott makes it look easy.
Twenty years later, Déjà Vu serves as a reminder of how much audiences lost in 2012, when Scott died in an apparent suicide. His older brother, Ridley, may have collected more Oscars over his decades-long career, but Tony Scott was a master craftsman and more: a surprisingly sensitive director of actors. Anyone who missed out on his time-travel masterpiece in 2006 would do well to stream it today.
