Film Reviews

DÉJÀ VU So, yeah, Déjà Vu: You’ve seen it all before. Take that, Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer! Except you haven’t quite. The story goes like this: The ferry blows up (seen it), Denzel Washington struts on the scene to investigate (seen it), clues are discovered (seen it), a dead girl is found under mysterious circumstances (seen it), Val Kilmer arrives looking kind of pudgy (...), everyone heads off to a top-secret government base and climbs into a gigantic spark plug. There, joined by the usual group of wiseass technicians, they begin to retrace events with the help of Snow White, a next-level surveillance system linked up, naturally, to seven satellites. The console renders real-time composite images of anything that happened four days ago, from any angle, through all obstacles, and in the visual vocabulary of the 21st-century blockbuster. Except that actually it’s a time machine. (Now here is something new.) Of course Scott and his screenwriters (Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio) are less interested in concepts to explore than high-concept gimmickry. But why complain when it results in a car chase that simultaneously blows shit up on two different time planes? (Citywide) (Nathan Lee)

DHOOM 2  Sanjay Gadhvi’s high tech heist thriller uses bits and pieces filched from the global action movie repertoire (M:I-2, Charlie’s Angels, et al.) to lend some cutting-edge flash to Bollywood’s loose-knit “cinema of attractions” format. Here, the action set pieces alternate smoothly with song-and-dance numbers and scenes of romance and broad comedy. The first Dhoom (a.k.a. Blast, in the sense of “having a…”) was a fast and furious motorcycle romp; this self-explanatory sequel is a globe-trotting succession of elaborate robbery and chase sequences. Judged purely as a crime movie, it’s a mess, littered with unanswered questions and dangling plot threads. As an entertainment that has more in common with a variety show than with a well-made narrative, it lives up to its title. In spite of all the CGI- and wire-assisted heavy lifting, the most impressive special effects here are the sinuously athletic dance moves of leading man Hrithek Roshan (Krrish), who plays the dashing cat burglar everyone else is chasing — a wall-climbing, sky-diving master of disguise. Eventually, he comes to share a John Woo-style adversarial bond with Bluffmaster star Abishek Bachchan, cast a cop so grimly businesslike that even his pals call him “Mr. Grumpy.” The women, including a startlingly slimmed-down and scantily clad Aishwarya Rai, are presented as little more than additional “attractions,” often in rain-spangled slow motion. But in a couple of intense encounters toward the end, Rai and Roshan, gazing at each other with their perfect profiles, revive a form of unselfconscious romantic fantasy that survives today almost exclusively in Bollywood. A movie meal as satisfying as this one can make you feel that nothing else matters. (Fallbrook 7; Naz 8; Laguna Hills 3) (David Chute)

Unholy Smoke (Zade Rosenthal/New Line Productions)

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• Julian Hernandez
• Gaston Biraben
• Kristin Chenoweth
• Danny DeVito
• Tony Scott

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LET’S GO TO PRISON One doesn’t feel too optimistic about a film that titteringly names its protagonist Lyshitski, especially when all the trailers would have you believe the story’s a one-joke riff on the fear of a black penis. So perhaps it’s just a case of low expectations at work here, but Let’s Go to Prison is much funnier and weirder than you think. Directed by Mr. Show’s Bob Odenkirk, who doesn’t have much of an eye for cinematography or editing but knows a good joke when he hears one, it involves a harebrained revenge scheme conceived by a perpetual screwup (Dax Shepard) against the judge who regularly incarcerated him. Since the judge has died, our antihero plots to get the judge’s pompous son (Will Arnett) thrown in jail, then has himself sent back as well so he can make prison life even more miserable for the guy. Michael Shannon (last seen as World Trade Center’s heroic ex-Marine) is a standout here as a white supremacist with a fetish for forks, cannily mocking the obsessive zeal he’s shown in other roles. But Let’s Go to Prison is Shepard and Arnett’s show, and if they weren’t on everybody’s comedic radar before, they will be after this. (Citywide) (Luke Y. Thompson)

LIVING THE DREAM An embarrassment of a vanity project, Living the Dream is a film written, directed and starring a real corporate headhunter. In his day job, Christian Schoyen runs an executive search firm, so he ponied up the money to make a film about the perils of — guess what? — running an executive search firm. Jonathan (Schoyen himself) and Brenda (Sean Young... yes, that Sean Young) are drifting through life in their 40s, still reeling from not being picked for teams in grade-school soccer games. These flashbacks to recess are the only explanations given for the characters’ motivation to team up and start their own venture: Global Recruitment. The two lie, cheat and steal their way into a fancy office building where they fail miserably at building a client base. In between sterile scenes about starting a small business are snippets of lame L.A. social satire (where we learn that bouncers are fickle and barflies shallow) and glimpses at Jonathan and Brenda’s depressing personal lives — naturally, as both star and producer, Schoyen includes a few sex scenes featuring himself and attractive, nude women. Allegedly, some proceeds from this movie, assuming there are any, will be donated to a homeless shelter. This gesture, however, does not excuse the wretchedness of Living the Dream, an independent feature told with all the poetry of a self-promoting Power Point presentation. (Sunset 5) (James C. Taylor)