(Right, so…I’m dumb. And I was tired when I wrote this. No, Jerry Bruckheimer had nothing to do with Batman. After watching An Evening With Kevin Smith 85 times, I should have realized this. So let’s go ahead and change the lede.) One would think that time travel was a tired subject in film. After trying to figure out the rules behind Back to the Future and comparing them to the way that the subject is handled in the Terminator series, lesser moviegoers would be fed up with the science - or in many cases, lack thereof - in time travel movies. Enter Deja Vu, on its surface one big misstep for uberproducer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Denzel Washington (whose foresight hasn’t been all that great in recent history anyway). But behind the over-the-top trailer dialogue and popcorn-ready pyrotechnics is an intriguing time travel study.

Washington plays ATF agent Doug Carlin, called in to investigate an attack on a ferry full of midshipmen in New Orleans. The attack turns into more than a simple case of domestic terrorism when a witness washes up on shore too soon to have been on the ferry but burned to be made to appear as such. Interestingly, the witness (Paula Patton as Claire Kuchever) left a message for Carlin after her own time of death. Carlin learns the reasoning when he’s tapped to join an FBI agent (Val Kilmer) and his team, who have developed technology that allows them to do real-time surveillance approximately 54 hours into the past. Instead of using the technology to simply identify the terrorist, Carlin decides to use it to stop him before he can commit the crime, saving Claire in the process.

The concept is not totally unlike Frequency in that the heroes only have a limited amount of time they can observe and they have to try to solve the crime from the future (and, like Frequency, this stars Jim Caviezel, except this time as the baddie). And like Frequency, this film is well-acted. But that’s not the most impressive part: the rules of time travel are well thought-out here, and as you progress in the movie, you begin to connect the seemingly random dots very quickly. Director Tony Scott keeps the pace quick, never letting the action slow down enough to make you question the logic behind the concept.

Of course, you’ve seen almost everything there is to this movie before: a terrorist explosion, Denzel investigating with his trademark attitude, a beautiful woman killed under mysterious circumstances, Adam Goldberg cracking all sorts of wise…heck, even the time travel angle has worn treads. But throw them all together into an extremely entertaining mix, which this go-around certainly does, and you’ll find nobody complaining of an unwelcome feeling of deja vu.

Oh, come on, you had to allow me one pun on the title.

Rating: * * * * of 5

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