CASINO ROYALE - MOVIE REVIEWS: DÉJÀ VUE

Casino Royale audiences who may have missed a lot of the spectacular explosions that previous James Bond movies exhibited are likely to find them in abundance in Jerry Bruckheimer's Déjà Vu. In the words of Colin Covert in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "The man has never seen a vehicle he thought wouldn't look better in high, tight spiral." The film opens with an explosion aboard a New Orleans ferry that sends flames 350 feet in the air, killing 543 people. "Really, hasn't New Orleans been through enough in the past year?" asks Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News. Most of the critics agree that the film, which involves time travel and other sci-fi goodies, makes hardly a lick of sense. But most also agree that it doesn't matter. Writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times: "If you want your films to add up logically, you're welcome to take your calculator somewhere else. But if you do, you will be missing out on some first-class genre fun." Or as Michael Wilmington puts it in the Chicago Tribune: "If you can swallow one of the most elaborate and absurd time-machine gimmicks imaginable, you can have a good time." Virtually all of the critics remark that Déjà Vu amounts to remixing the formula of Jerry Bruckheimer's most successful thrillers. As Stephen Witty remarks in the Newark Star-Ledger, "If you feel you've seen some of it before, that's not ESP. That's Hollywood."

22/11/2006