DEJA VU

Pssst. C’mere. Wanna know the key to understanding this movie? Lean in close, now. I’ll tell you…

Everything that happens has already happened before and will happen again unless what happens doesn’t happen as it’s happening. Got it?

Good, because then maybe you can watch the movie without the knotted brain and perplexed expression that overcame me about 30 minutes in and lasted through the closing credits. I’m not sure what possessed oft-maligned director Tony Scott to try to make an action movie even more incomprehensible than the comparatively linear and logical Domino (which I actually enjoyed), but he has. And I guarantee the result will leave filmgoers confused and unsatisfied, and will have critics gleefully sharpening their pencils in advance of a supreme skewering.

Part suspense thriller, part action movie, part sci-fi and part total mess, the film revolves around ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), who’s sent to New Orleans to investigate the bombing of a passenger ferry that left more than 500 people dead. Doug gets especially interested in cracking the case when he lays eyes on the body of a hot dead woman named Claire Kuchever (Idlewild’s Paula Patton), who washes up onshore after the explosion, partially charred and missing some digits. Doug’s enchanted by Claire’s lifeless corpse (who wouldn’t be?), and is spurred on in his investigation by Claire’s earnest father, who wants to make sure his daughter’s killer is brought to justice.

While crawling around and sniffing slimy substances (seriously) under a bridge, Doug is approached by another federal agent (Val Kilmer, looking puffy) and brought to a high-tech lab where a scientist named Denny (Adam Goldberg) and his team (Erika Alexander and Elden Henson) are using some high-falootin’, top-secret, experimental technology to “watch” the past. Trying to explain what this involves would give us all a massive headache, so suffice it to say: the technology allows the team to re-witness everything that happened exactly four days in the past. Not five days, not three days, just a constant four-day window. Sort of like Tivo, only less interesting and far creepier.

Soon, through their surveillance of days gone by, Doug and the crew discover that the bomber they’re seeking is a rather greasy-looking, unkempt Jim Caviezel, whose character is never fully explored or explained, but who skulks around like a lunatic extremist with Crazy Eyes (look at him, he’s got them crazy eyes!), spouting cryptic messages about destiny and the future and the government. Who is he? What does he know? We never find out. And all that matters to Doug is preventing Claire’s death…even though it already happened.

Confused yet?

Wait until they introduce time travel to the proceedings.

Oh, lordy, there was a lot going on in Déjà Vu and much of it makes no sense at all. Aside from the daunting mental task of trying to wrap your mind around a logistical nightmare, the film demands that you pay no attention whatsoever to the plot or its massive, canyon-sized holes. It felt a lot like there was another 40 minutes of missing movie floating around out there somewhere, and that when that additional footage is reinserted into the DVD release, the story will be much, much better and far, far clearer. As it stands, the entire last half of the film is sorely lacking the answers to a whole heap of questions the filmmakers pose early on. I mean, if you’re going to introduce Bruce Greenwood – known for playing some nasty fellas in recent years – and have his character be a Fed who’s all shifty and creepy and menacing, shouldn’t you pay that off somehow? Where does Adam Goldberg go at the end? What happens in the present that becomes the future when Doug visits the past? And how many Doug Carlins are there at any given moment in time?

And yet, as convoluted as the film is, it has some redeeming qualities. Some. For a while, it’s fascinating, and even exciting. When Doug first accidentally “tests” the line between the present and the past, it’s a gasp-inducing moment. Washington turns in another upstanding-hero performance and has a little fun with it, which was a nice change from the overly serious leading-man roles he’s had of late. Patton, who’s stunning, doesn’t have much to do but stand there (or, lie there, as it were) and look pretty, but she somehow manages to create a character worth saving. I would have loved to have seen more of the trio of tech nerds led by Goldberg (who’s always excellent), and even wanted a little more Kilmer onscreen, because all were good, if underused.

As it stands, Déjà Vu clocks in at just over two hours. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment or just a foolish optimist, but I really think another hour of (an admittedly sloppy) movie would be worth it for the sake of clarity alone. And, if it turned out I was wrong, I could always hope for technology that would allow me to rewind to this moment and untype that wish.