It really isn't deja vu all over again

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2006)

"Deja Vu" is surely the most ironic title of one of the best movies of the year. The only way in which this movie is formulaic is that it resembles John Travolta's "Blow-Out" (1981), another superb and underrated thriller in which the hero grasps at technology to try and save a woman's life.
Denzel Washington plays yet another cop, but after "Out of Time" and "The Inside Man," what a treat to see him play a *smart* cop. Here he's Doug Carlin, a New Orleans ATF agent called in to help find an assassin-terrorist who set off a bomb that killed hundreds of people on a ferry.
Carlin is put on the case because he has a way of sniffing out relevant details. This turns out to be extremely helpful when the New Orleans police are shown to have technology that can show the whereabouts of anybody, anywhere, three-and-a-half days before a given event.
Carlin has discovered that an innocent and now-dead woman was a pawn in the assassin's plot, so he has the technologists look at her life just prior to her death. The late woman is, of course, too beautiful for words, and we're given long, loving shots in which Carlin beholds her gorgeousness.
At this point, you figure that the movie will be a bargain-rate version of "Laura" in which a slack-jawed cop falls in love with a dead woman. And you wonder why the brilliant techno-geeks are letting this guy use their up-to-the-minute software to pursue some lurid fantasy. And it is at precisely this point that you have gotten it all wrong.
I can't bear to give away any more plot points. Suffice to say, the cop is far smarter than we thought, and so is the movie -- a film with extremely thoughtful ideas, that engages its audience instead of allowing them to be passive viewers. The last movie I can think of that offered so many clever concepts to chew on was "Contact" (and that was ten years ago). "Deja Vu" is worlds removed from that sci-fi gem, yet it has the same sort of plot twists that come out of left field and yet seem wholly plausible when they add up to the bigger picture.
For once, credit goes to everyone. To screenwriters Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio for writing such a satisfying convoluted script. To director Tony Scott, who (like his brother Ridley) seems to be making better movies in his later years than he did two decades ago. And to stars Washington, Val Kilmer (his best work in years), and just about everyone else in the sterling cast.
Like most viewers, I put off seeing "Deja Vu" after seeing middling reviews that complained how convoluted its plot is. I think a lot of people have forgotten that you can engage your brain at a movie and still have a great time with it.