Messy, and should have been better

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2007)

It's obvious that the whole point of this film is to incorporate the time travelling idea into a plot, but unfortunately the plot itself therefore got left behind and what we end up with is a fairly cool idea wasted by a messy and rather boring central plot line. The idea behind this film is not all that original - time travelling has been done before, and while I tend to avoid films revolving around the subject; I haven't seen anything done quite like this before, and the film deserves some sort of kudos for that. The plot focuses on an explosion on a ferry which kills over 500 people. The explosion is soon deemed not to have being caused by naturally, and AFT agent Doug Carlin is assigned to investigate the case. The body of a woman, apparently killed in the explosion, but who had actually died an hour before is uncovered and the AFT agent believes she is the key to solving the case. He is then invited to join a new surveillance team, which uses new technology to follow the woman during the time before she was murdered...
Denzel Washington is in very familiar territory; having played a copper so many times it's hard to imagine him doing anything else. The main plot presents a problem for this film; it's always going to be difficult for something like this to really convince, and the plot here doesn't - or at least not really. It's not a flaw that had to be fatal for the film, but it becomes such because there really isn't all that much excitement to go with it. The best action sequence in the film sees Denzel chasing the culprit, only the culprit happens to be four days in the past. It works fairly well, but as you might expect; it's difficult to totally go along with. Too much of the film takes place in the lad where the central characters are watching the action unfold, and it's not very exciting. We don't actually find out what the new technology is until about half way through, and once we do find out what it is, the rest of the film seems rushed. I think more could have been made of this; Deja Vu really needed a solid plot and some more interesting scenes, so despite a few good ideas; this is a failure overall.