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The title refers to the deployment of time-honored gangster methods in a brand-new new setting. Otherwise, Deja Vu is chock full of startling surprises. Set in 1925, the storyline moves with ease from Chicago to Russia and back again. A Windy-City hitman is sent to Odessa to kill a mob informant. The victim-to-be is an enterprising soul, taking full advantage of a newly opened shipping line serving Chicago, Odessa and Constantinople. He jealously guards his smuggling operation by hiring his own hitman. The plot device of Mafia tactics being exercised in Russia is disturbingly prescient, given the current mob-controlled activities in the former Soviet Union. This 1989 Deja Vu bears no relation to the 1984 horror film of the same name.