Thrilling and ingenious

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2018)

After someone blows up a ferry filled with military personnel and their families all law enforcement agencies are going bonkers. ATF agent Carlin gets a call about a burnt body of a woman washing ashore. Except that this happened before the attack. Carlin falls in love with the dead woman, Claire. He's then invited to join a special FBI task force that utilizes cutting edge tech to render images from satellites and cameras everywhere in the area, but from events that happened several days ago. They don't know where to start, so Carlin suggests they look at Claire. Sure enough, she's selling her old SUV and gets a call from the perpetrator. Carlin's partner who is supposed to be on vacation actually died on scene as well. Claire has some strange reactions so Carlin has his doubts about the technology the FBI is using and sure enough there's an exciting twist about how the FBI can access the info from the past. It also has some portable device which allows them to expand their radius, which involves Carin having to drive to places after the bad guy in the past to see what else he did. Here we learn that his partner actually went after the bad guy thanks to a mysterious tip and how the Claire ended up dead.
I missed Deja Vu when it came out so I was quite surprised by this movie watching it years later. The beginning was pretty bad though, it looked like something out of those ridiculous Michael Bay movies. Washington is also a problem as he often struggles with knowing when to get serious and when to act like a goof. But it's the story here that shines and how it combines police work with science and science fiction to come up with something surprising and that requires your full attention to little details. It's also is one of those movies that does explain itself and everything that happens. I could have done without the politics and without the happy ending which wasn't suited to the movie and completely unnecessary. Otherwise, Deja Vu is an outstanding movie.