In a 2005 interview with the Sunday Times, the late Tony Scott reflected on the key artistic difference between himself and his older brother Ridley: “[He] makes films for posterity … they’ll be around for a long time. I think my films are more rock’n’roll.”
While the elder Scott’s movies certainly tend to be classical and operatic in their scope and style, the younger brother’s films are marked by a much more experimental edge – a rebellious desire to create beauty out of divine chaos. The pinnacle of this creative ethos may be his 2006 work Déjà Vu, a high-octane sci-fi action hybrid which asks the question: would you risk your life to go back in time and save a person you loved?
Shot on location just months after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Déjà Vu takes place on the humid streets of New Orleans in the wake of a grisly terrorist bombing onboard a passenger ferry on the Mississippi. When special agent Doug Carlin (a wonderfully crackly Denzel Washington) is called in to investigate the attack, he’s soon whisked away to an experimental unit of the FBI (led by Val Kilmer), which hopes to use a time-shifting surveillance device to prevent the attack from happening.
Scott has long been fascinated in our relationship with state-sanctioned technology; films such as Top Gun and Crimson Tide transform the interior spaces of fighter jets and nuclear submarines into battlefields for warring egos and ideologies.
Déjà Vu takes the surveillance-state concerns of Enemy of the State – another Scott film that examines covert bureaucratic overreach – and reworks it for a post-9/11 society; a Patriot Act-era political thriller crossed with a techno-paranoia fantasy. America’s fractured national psyche provides the framework for a highly enjoyable action film, one that is elevated by science fiction.
When Doug catches his first glimpse of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), one of the suspected victims of the bombing, Déjà Vu morphs into something more provocative. Blowing up her face on a giant LED screen, you can see the gears start to turn in Doug’s head. Is there a reality where she is still alive? Can I go back in time and save her from her fate?
Scott, quietly one of Hollywood’s most romantic film-makers, infuses this moment with an aching desire – a piano ballad tinkles away as Doug stares at Claire; up until this point, he has only ever seen her corpse.
While others have invoked its similarities to the thematic conceit of Vertigo, another film in which a man desperately strives to recreate the image of a woman he falls in love with, Déjà Vu approaches this premise from a rivetingly inverted angle. Where Hitchcock’s film ends with the death of the woman, Scott upends this by making Claire’s demise the beginning.
Having developed his frenetic visual style on the sets of commercials and music videos, Scott’s films weren’t exactly known for their highbrow inclinations. His final films were visually chaotic: rapid edits, oversaturated colours and 360-degree helicopter shots bombarding audiences with information. Déjà Vu is perhaps the greatest synthesis of this frenzied storytelling approach; the roaming camera movements and constant snap zooms situate us within the invasive nature of omnipotent digital surveillance.
A bravura action set-piece that takes place across two temporal realms showcases the best this abrasive style has to offer: a thrilling car-chase sequence in which Doug drives a mobile version of the time-viewing device against oncoming traffic in the present while receiving directions from his FBI colleagues tracking the attack’s perpetrator in the past.
When the apparatus malfunctions, Doug is forced to control the device himself, his obsession with saving Claire, or more specifically an image of her, compelling him to risk his life and navigate his way through the parallel timelines simultaneously.
When Scott died in 2012, the director was in the middle of scouting locations for future projects. After his death, Washington – one of Scott’s most frequent collaborators – was asked what he would miss most about his friend. “Just his passion,” he replied. “His energy. His shorts. That pink hat.” For anyone who has seen a photo of Tony Scott on set, this answer comes as no shock. There are some images you never want to forget.
Déjà Vu is available to stream on Disney+ in Australia and the UK and can be rented online in the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
