9/11 at the Movies Pt. 3: Déjà Vu & The Taking of Pelham 123 (with Abid Anwar)

When discussing the pantheon of the best actor/director collaborations in film, you rarely hear about Denzel Washington and Tony Scott. From 1995 until Scott's untimely death in 2012, the pair worked together on five of the best action films of the 90s and 2000s. While Denzel is one of our most beloved and acclaimed movie stars, Scott long lived in the shadow of his brother, Ridley, mostly written off by critics as a technician and hack. Today on the podcast, we're looking back at their underrated collaboration by focusing on two of their outputs during the War on Terror, both of which saw Denzel up against unhinged white terrorists: the 2006 time travel romance thriller "Déjà Vu" and the 2009 remake of "The Taking of Pelham 123." Evoking some of the most striking and disturbing imagery of 9/11, "Déjà Vu" acted as a love letter to a post-Katrina New Orleans, while paying homage to films like Otto Preminger's "Laura" and Hitchcock's "Vertigo," while paving the way for the more critically acclaimed works of Christopher Nolan. We're joined by film journalist and writer Abid Anwar to discuss the every-man appeal of Denzel, Scott's influence on the genre for several decades, and why critics were sour on these two thrillers while showering jingoistic and racist depictions of terrorism in film with endless praise. Both of these Denzel/Scott collaborations are currently streaming on Amazon Prime.