Deja Vu and Logical Flaws

I liked Deja Vu a lot. It's the kind of stuff I like to write -- everyday people going through a tale that is enlivened by some supernatural or sci fi twist.

Here, a lot of it works well; Denzel Washington is very likable, and the movie strikes a nice balance between geeky technical stuff, action and a nice little romance. Even all the exposition is finessed very well.

Logic is a problem though, something that some of the reviews have been picking up on. It's the kind of movie that gets you to think as you are watching it, so much so that it demands, more than other movies, that what you are thinking about should actually make perfect sense by the end.

In Deja Vu, it doesn't always. And as regular denizens of Wordplay know, co-writers Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio have been carefully writing for a while about how they aren't completely enamored about the changes director Tony Scott made to the screenplay.

So tonight, after seeing the movie, I read the script. I have a draft makrked "First Draft May 17, 2004", which I believe was the draft that sold.

And the core story is the same. The logic problems are the same. The biggest change is the fact that in the movie, Denzel Washington's character is initially misled about the technology he is taking part in; in the script, he is simply told the truth from the beginning . The movie's version works better; it is more credible that they wouldn't tell Denzel what is happening initially, and as Denzel puzzles out what is happening, it gives the audience a chance to do the same.

Unfortunately, a lot of critics (a subset referred to as "idiots") didn't seem to be paying enough attention, and got confused over what exactly was going on.

Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman's review, in which he seems completely baffled about what is going on, is a prime example; he cites the initial cover story as what is actually happening, despite a sequence in the middle of the film that makes it perfectly clear what the truth was.

Maybe he was in the bathroom.

*** SPOILERS ***

The big logic flaw in this movie is the fact that the film (and the script) tries to have it both ways; they have fun with the idea that even as Denzel Washington goes back in time, everything he does in the past has already happened. So his fingerprints are in the woman's apartment throughout, it is his bloody gauze in the wastebasket throughout, when she talks to her friend on the answering machine, he is there with her.

But because this all happens in a time stream when the woman is still dead, it makes no sense that it is happening.

Put it this way -- when Denzel Washington goes back in time, and saves the woman from being killed, that is when everything should change. There's even a helpful drawing of it along the way (which is in the movie and not in the script; maybe that's one of the big problems, though the drawing is true) in which we learn that things that change the past will create a different time path.

The problem is that there would be no time path in which Denzel is investigating this woman's death and also find himself puzzling out evidence that turns out to be of his presence after he saved the woman. It's impossible, even under the terms of this script's logic.

*** SPOILERS OFF ***

So the script doesn't hold up under close scrutiny. Though a reading of the negative reviews (it's currently running at about 61% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) shows that a lot of the critics who haven't liked it aren't giving it close scrutiny; they aren't disliking it because this key plot idea doesn't make sense, they are disliking it because they haven't paid enough real attention to the plot to understand what the hell is going on.

And for me, the logic holes were forgivable; I was along for the whole ride, and it was a good one. Deja Vu is well worth seeing, though if you need to go to the bathroom in the middle, hold it.