Good start but non-sensical...

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2009)

1st watched 5/28/2009 – 5 out of 10 (Dir- Tony Scott): Good start but non-sensical ending destroys what could have been a good detective story. The movie is basically about a terrorist setting off a bomb on a New Orleans ferry and a detective from the ATF, played by Denzel Washington, trying to figure out who did it and why. Once he's added to a secret team to work on the issue, he's introduced to a machine that looks back four days in time and is able to do surveillance, somehow. But we find out later that the machine isn't just capable of surveillance but is also a time machine. It's not been used much for real interacting with the past(they've only sent small object back) but they try it with a piece of paper that will hint the past cops as to what's happening – it doesn't quite work but gives Denzel's character the idea to try more. He gets attracted to a victim and after the case is solved he decides he wants to send himself back to save her and possibly stop the event from ever occurring. This is where the story gets goofy as the machine has never been tested with humans and it makes no sense that they would allow him to do this. The rest of the movie is ridiculous as most movies that explore time travel are and destroyed what could have been a good movie. Of course, the gimmick had to be used for this purpose to appease our action-oriented, gimmick-driven, good guy gets the girl American movie audience but this is what makes it fall apart. Too bad because it definitely was compelling in the first half.