Monday 6 August 2007

Deja Vu - have I seen a film this bad before?

I just sat through about 3/4 of Deja Vu. What I mean by that is I watched the first half (which took an hour) and then fast forwarded through the rest, avoiding big chunks along the way until I got to the last five minutes.

Hasn't Val Kilmer gotten fat? That's the only new thing to come out of this movie.

I feel I can tell you the entire premise of the movie, since it's so awful, you will never want to see it, but the premise is so bad, I don't think I should even put you through the pain of reading it. Denzel Washington is crap. Val, as noted earlier, is fat and his makeup creases around his neck. There is lots of time warping technology which is just dribble. I just couldn't bear it.

The worst thing is the direction. Remember how really jumpy camera movements were just so action-like when they were first used in the dog fighting sequences in Top Gun? The way the camera raced around to show a Mig zooming by, then lost it, then found it again etc etc? It was really, really good.

Top Gun was directed by one of the Scott brothers - I can never remember whether it was Tony or Ridley, but whichever one it was, he just can't let go of the technique. Especially when he is making a movie for Jerry Brucheimer, as is the case here. It's gotten so bad, you have two people sitting in a cafe having a coffee and the camera has to leap around so much, you start to think that the cameraman is actually a monkey with a bad amphetamine habit. I am so over it. One day, someone is going to get really frustrated and nail Tony or Ridley's camera to the floor and that will be that. I personally would like to be the person that does it.

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