Sightlines · reception
How Déjà Vu was received
2006 · Tony Scott · Déjà Vu on Sightlines
The arc
Shrugged off in 2006 as a slick Bruckheimer sci-fi thriller with a silly premise, it's since become a centerpiece of the Tony Scott reappraisal — after his death in 2012, cinephiles recast his hyperactive late-digital style as genuine auteurism, and Déjà Vu is now regularly called one of his best.
What’s debated
Fans endlessly relitigate whether the time-travel logic actually holds together — and whether it matters at all in a movie this confidently made.
Its footprint
The bridge-across-time car chase — Denzel driving in the present while pursuing a car in the past — is the film's calling card, cited constantly as one of the great conceptual action sequences; the film is also a key text of the 'vulgar auteurism' critical debate of the early 2010s.
Where it stands
A canon climber and a Letterboxd favorite of the 'actually, late Tony Scott was great' school — the go-to answer for 'most underrated Denzel movie'.
Did you know? It was the first major Hollywood production to shoot in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer kept the production there in early 2006 rather than relocating, and the film acknowledges the city's recovery in its end credits.