High-class entertainment, anchored by the usual solid Denzel performance

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2006)

In concept alone, DEJA VU is fairly unique. The government has invented a device that allows time to be manipulated in a way that the actual past can be viewed exactly how it happened. A thought like this could be analyzed forever, but DEJA VU isn't that type of movie, it's an action movie. Which isn't too bad, I guess.
Denzel Washington plays Doug Carlin, an ATF agent assigned to a possible terrorist-related explosion on a boat in New Orleans, that has left 543 people dead, including a group of Navy sailors on leave. It is clear very quickly that the explosion was a bombing, not an accident. A woman (Paula Patton) with significant burns marks washes up on shore, but Carlin believes that she was not on the boat, making her a key part to investigating the baffling crime.
Called to a secret operation involving the said time warping instrument, Carlin finds himself over his head. FBI agent Pryzwarra (a very chubby Val Kilmer) and a group of techies (played by Adam Goldberg and Elden Henson in a couple of seriously funny bit parts) explain that they can go back in time four days and see the past. Things get interesting when not only does Carlin start seeing the past, but starts living in the past. The movie's most exciting and conceptually innovative scene is a car chase in which Carlin chases after a person who is actually in the past. Trippy? I think so. In all seriousness, it is one of the best chase sequences of any kind ever put into a film.
While the film is almost great, it stops short of greatness. Where similar sci-fi masterpieces such as THE MATRIX capitalized on its epic, mind-bending concepts, DEJA VU wimps out in a way at the end, closing on a good note, but only after a disappointing final scene. Overall though, it is high-class entertainment, anchored by the usual solid Denzel performance and with restrained direction from the usually frenetic Tony Scott (DOMINO, anyone?), as well as a thought-inducing premise.
Review written by James Chapel for www.boxofficefanatic.com