Déjà Vu
June 2007 Reviewed by: Josh Barber Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

When a terrorist attack destroys a ferry full of Navy sailors, ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is contacted for his help in tracking down a suspect. Using a system of high-tech surveillance satellites, Carlin has the opportunity to look four days and six hours into the past, to catch the man responsible for the bombing. However, he seems more focused on one of the victims, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), convinced that she holds the key to stopping the crime.

Tony Scott re-teams with a few old collaborators for Déjà Vu, a science fiction story set in New Orleans. The "time window" of the script allows for many fun beats, like a car chase that involves only one vehicle. But this is far from a Sci Fi Channel movie of the week, thanks to a clear script, strong direction and a capable cast of actors.

After so many visually extravagant movies from Tony Scott in recent years, Déjà Vu seems surprisingly low-key. The fast, blurry camera tricks are kept to a minimum, and the colors are fully saturated yet appropriately muted to match the subject matter. Blacks are mostly solid, but there is a bit of noise in some scenes, and distant backgrounds are sometimes blurrier than they should be. Still, unless you're looking for these errors, they're not going to jump out at you.

Similarly, the soundtrack never really gets the kind of room-shaking noise that will wake the neighbors, but it still sounds impressive. In fact, the score seems louder and deeper than the many gunshots, explosions and car chases. The dialogue comes through clearly, and overall this is a good mix -- solid and full without becoming overbearing.

The extras, at first, seem light. There are collections of deleted and extended scenes, though those two terms seem interchangeable. There is optional commentary from Scott, explaining why the scenes were cut, and altogether these scenes total about 14 minutes.

The final feature is the real meat. "The Surveillance Window" is half commentary, half making-of -- much like the kind of branching feature that was introduced with The Matrix's "Follow the White Rabbit." Instead of having the viewer press a button with an onscreen prompt, the asides come on by themselves. The movie pauses and the image folds around, matching the look of the time window, and we're given a few minutes of behind-the-scenes info about some facet of the film just before we see it in action.

There's a lot of information about the stunts, of course, but also about the locations and the way the actors created their characters. It's all quite good. This branching feature is paired with a full-length commentary from director Tony Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and writer Bill Marsilli. The three were recorded separately and pieced together, and they sometimes repeat what we just saw in an aside, but "The Surveillance Window" is a very nicely done feature and has a lot of good information to offer. The only downside? The commentary and the features are linked: though you can play the features by themselves, you can't select the commentary with the audio options on your remote.

Déjà Vu is also available on Blu-ray with a 5.1 uncompressed LPCM soundtrack that does even greater justice to the excellent sound design.

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