Very tight screenplay that had me satisfied in the end

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2006)

This movie sneaked its way up to release without a lot of fanfare, which is unfortunately because this is a really well done movie.
In simplest terms, Denzel Washington is ATF agent Doug Carlin investigating a New Orleans ferry bombing, and ends up falling in love with a woman victim of the incident.
*** SPOILER WARNING *** Quite early in the movie, we are introduced by a new piece of surveillance technology that is capable of seeing anything that happened exactly four days and some hours prior to the present. It also turns out, that some of the present time can leak back into the past to the subjects being surveilled. With this equipment, Carlin has to piece together the events leading up to the ferry bombing, and perhaps influence the past enough to prevent the bombing from happening at all.
Given this premise, the first third of the movie needed a stronger than usual dose of suspension of disbelief in order to accept that the smoke-and-mirrors bill-of-sale the operators (which to some extent remind me of the Lone Gunmen trio from the X-Files) of the machine tries to unload on Carlin in trying to explain the technology at work. Bear with the story however, and you will be rewarded in due time with a more proper explanation of facts. Keep watching the movie, and you will see all the loose ends tie up nicely.
This is a very well written and tight screenplay. Give it a bit of slack at the beginning, and you will come out content.