Going Back to Look Forward

Rating: 8/10 (27 April 2007)

DÉJÀ VU is a riveting film about time travel in tandem with crime investigation that works on every level. Tony Scott is back in his element as the top director of intrigue/thrillers. Working with a challenging script by Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio that asks the viewer to accept the possibility of time travel, Scott is able to make the story work clearly despite the interplay of mixing the viewing of the past form the vantage of the present with placing a character into that past to alter it.
The setting is New Orleans, still suffering from the devastation of Katrina, where a ferryboat explodes killing hundreds of people. ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms) agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is brought into the investigation of the 'accident' when he discovers elements that suggest the explosion was the act of a terrorist. Agent Pryzwarra (a very fat Val Kilmer) and his team of secretive experts (Adam Goldberg, Elden Henson, Erika Alexander and Bruce Greenwood) introduce Doug to a highly sophisticated machine that coordinates cameras and heat detectors from satellites and security cameras that is able to mix images and reveal the past - a tricky means of examining a crime scene ex post facto to capture the perpetrators. Spurred on with Doug's discovery of a beautiful female body (Paula Patton) washed up from the water before the explosion, Doug examines all the evidence, observing the replay of the days leading up to the explosion, and finally asks to be placed in a time machine to return to the scene in hopes of altering the inevitable and unmasking the terrorist (Jim Caviezel). How this occurs forms the climax of the film, and while many viewers may have trouble swallowing the time travel aspect, the action is so tight and the technique of creating the incident so convincing that few viewers will fail to be wholly involved.
The cast is excellent, beginning with Denzel Washington as a terrific lead to the work of Jim Caviezel and all the more minor roles in between. The musical score by Harry Gregson-Williams and the cinematography by DP Paul Cameron heighten the tension of this exciting suspense movie. Grady Harp