No matter how airtight you think your script might be, there are always going to be paradoxes and gaps in logic, but so long as you keep things interesting and grounded, the inherent flaws of the genre seem less egregious.ĭuring an interview with CBS in late 2006, Denzel Washington explained that Scott "didn't want to make a science fiction movie" with Déjà Vu, "he wanted to make a science fact movie." Rather than get too deep in the weeds on the far-fetched nature of the premise, the late filmmaker "dug deep and did a lot of research about surveillance" in an effort to give it a more realistic backbone. (Photo by Robert Zuckerman/Touchtone Pictu/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)īy the time the credits start to roll, however, you've become something of an expert yourself, ready for an immediate rewatch and excited to catch all the subtle clues you missed on the first go-around with trained eyes.Īnd even then, there are more layers to peel back - more questions formulated about the mechanics of time travel works in these labyrinthine realities. While the characters enter the picture with seasoned track records, they become a much-needed proxy for the audience: initially skeptical and soaking in the mandatory chunks of exposition.Īmerican actor Denzel Washington with British director Tony Scott on the set of his movie Deja Vu. We learn the winding rules of each universe through the eyes of ATF investigator Doug Carlin (Denzel) and unnamed CIA operative The Protagonist (John David), two federal agents with years of experience who are suddenly out of their element when the idea of turning back time becomes a part of their procedural toolbox. The main difference between them is scope: Déjà Vu is more self-contained, unfolding across a single city, while Tenet opts for the global canvas of the James Bond franchise. They are, simply put, two sides of the same temporally-displaced coin. Time travel isn't just a superfluous genre gimmick in either project, it is an integral part of the storytelling that takes on new meaning as their narratives chug along, simultaneously surprising the viewer while allowing them to work out certain things for themselves. Fourteen years later, Nolan took this a step further with Tenet's inverted car chase, in which a pair of vehicles are running along two different time streams. That is to say they take well-worn genre concepts we've all seen a trillion times and presents them in fresh and unexpected ways.įor instance, Déjà Vu takes the classic car chase set piece and injects it full of sci-fi nitrous when the hero uses a special rig to pursue a vehicle in the past (a reverse Minority Report situation, if you will). Does the tale of an incorruptible government agent caught up in a clandestine time travel adventure sound familiar? Depending on what year you're currently standing in, we could either be referring to Tony Scott's Déjà Vu (2006) or Christopher Nolan's Tenet(2020).īoth are action-oriented science fiction films that revolve around traveling to the past both star members of the Washington family ( Denzel and his eldest son, John David, respectively) and both push the boundaries of what is possible in the genre.
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