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PLOT: A federal agent involved in a futuristic investigation attempts to change the past to thwart a terrorist attack.
Let's do the time warp again.
Deja Vu is a film about tinkering with the space-time continuum and revisiting the past in order to stop a terrible crime from ever happening.
As with many other movies about time travel, prescience or altering fate, nobody thinks to buy a lottery ticket.
Denzel Washington stars in Deja Vu as a federal agent looking for clues in the aftermath of a bombing. He is convinced that one victim (Paula Patton) is linked to the villain, but he's not sure how.
Washington's character is invited to become part of a new investigative team (this brings Val Kilmer into the story) that uses experimental technology. As he attempts to solve a crime, our hero inadvertently falls in love and stumbles across an unusual solution to finding a killer. And that's all we can say without spoiling the plot.
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Deja Vu is actually fairly biblical in its themes of redemption and resurrection. Funny how a dollop of wobbly science turns all that into a terrific action thriller. The story is a stretch, to be sure, but the storytelling is crisp and engaging; the picture is laced with the nitty-gritty violence and extravagant explosions we've all come to know and love from producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
And then there's Denzel Washington. Somewhere in his unique combo of everyman stuff and gravitas, he has become the one actor who can always turn the biggest slab of Velveeta into an Epoisses. Deja Vu gets mighty close to goofy from time to time, but Washington pulls it all back together -- sometimes, it seems, just by being there.
Deja Vu is a big, juicy popcorn movie with one truly gobsmacking moment -- a fleeting overhead shot of the real-life destruction wrought in New Orleans by Katrina. This was the first movie shot in that city after the hurricane.
BOTTOM LINE: From that hotbed of quantum physics, Hollywood, comes a story about attempting to change the past in order to make a better future. You couldn't really make a film like this without Val Kilmer, could you?
(This film is rated PG)