Denzel Washington’s time-travel thriller has been saved from the memory hole

If I could travel back in time and award a film the Academy Award for Best Action or Thriller of 2006, the winner would be Déjà Vu. In this pseudo-sci-fi thriller, Tony Scott directs Denzel Washington as an ATF field agent investigating a bomb explosion that killed 543 people on a New Orleans ferry. While that premise would be enough to carry most action flicks, writers Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio layer on a love story, a critique of post-9/11 surveillance, and augmented reality goggles that allow government agents to view four days into the past through a wormhole. Can Denzel Washington use time travel to save a woman he first met as a corpse at the morgue? You can watch the film right now on Criterion Channel to find out! [Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxdS8TP37I4] Filmed in New Orleans the year after Hurricane Katrina and released globally five years after 9/11, Scott’s film reflects on a half-decade of American trauma and a diminishing sense of control. It’s spiced with the lurid sex and violence of its sibling Jerry Bruckheimer films but is more reflective — like its creators were desperate to find some meaning in their play mayhem after witnessing so much real carnage in the news. Action film creators’ conscious (and subconscious) anxieties inspire the villains they select, the places they destroy, and the fears for which they provide catharsis. So what might come across as saccharine or bitter upon release can age like a fine wine. Its anxieties bloom as we get some distance from the film and the events that inspired it. Which brings me back to the Oscars. Of course, the Academy Awards didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a category for Best Action or Thriller Film. It likely never will. To many critics and audience members, action films and thrillers lack the gravitas of biopics and period dramas. But these films often contain that same creative magic; it’s just concealed beneath the exploding boats, oily body bags, and time-bending gizmos — waiting patiently for its audience to see it. Déjà Vu is part of Criterion Channel’s Surveillance Cinema collection, which debuted this month and contains a bunch of similarly enticing thrillers, including The Truman Show, Minority Report, Gattaca, and Body Double. Déjà Vu is streaming on Criterion Channel, and is also available to stream via VOD on Amazon Video and Apple TV.