'Deja Vu' offers thrills, little else

The movie's pace is not consistent.
By COLIN COVERT
(MINNEAPOLIS) STAR TRIBUNE
Deja vu is French for "Haven't I seen this somewhere before?" That reaction will be widespread among audiences for "Deja Vu."
The time-bending Denzel Washington police procedural shamelessly borrows ideas, from Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and "Rear Window" to John Woo's "Paycheck" and Van Damme's "Time Cop." And if we include car-flipping highway crashes under the category of "ideas," director Tony Scott swipes a lot of moves out of his own play book. The man has never seen a vehicle he thought wouldn't look better in high, tight spiral.
Shedding his usual dour demeanor, Washington plays a federal agent who knows that a nice smile or a strategic chuckle can open up a suspect and get the confession flowing. He's brought in to investigate the cataclysmic bombing of a New Orleans ferry by parties unknown, and swiftly recruited by a supersecret surveillance program that needs his street smarts to narrow the focus of their spy work.
One chance
Their view screens can look into the past, but there's only one chance to view events before they're gone forever. Washington's gradual, skeptical acceptance that such a contraption could exist eases us over the same hurdle.
As the investigator focuses on bombing victim Paula Patton, watching her move ever nearer the moment of her death, he develops a past-tense infatuation with the unattainable girl. His interest moves beyond the sentimental when he finds troubling connections between her and the bombing. Soon he's insisting on an unauthorized, untested trip to the past to investigate the girl, foil the bomb plot and save his ideal.
For a film about time, "Deja Vu" is haphazardly paced, slack in some parts and overly frantic in others. Dividing its attention between the minutiae of police work and Washington's yearning for a girl who may never be able to avoid impending death, it feels as if the story is expanding in opposite directions at once, like an amoeba.
Regains moorings
The film regains its moorings as an action-oriented whodunit when Jim Caviezel appears as a suspect with bizarre notions of patriotism and sacrifice. His glower could strip paint.
Washington and Patton make an appealing pair, but Tony Scott movies are all about big stunt sequences. When there are boats to blow up, shootouts to stage or autos to demolish, "Deja Vu" shakes off its aura of pleasant-enough hackwork and delivers high-voltage thrills. The rest of the time it is, ironically, forgettable.