There's going to be a lot of sadness about this, and rightly so. The RottenTomatoes ranking is currently 55% fresh; déjà vu It's generally not considered a very good movie. Nor am I claiming that it is.
But it contains some very clever ideas about how time travel can be used. The story follows ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), who is tasked with investigating a violent domestic terrorist attack in New Orleans.
Soon, Carlin is scouted by a secret government special committee, where something surprising is revealed. They create a “time window” in which they can observe any event, but it happened exactly 4 days, 6 hours, 3 minutes, and 45 seconds. In the past it was 14.5 nanoseconds. By using this device, they hope to learn who planned the attack and prevent new attacks.
Things get even more complicated when Doug discovers that the time window doesn't just show the past, but that inanimate objects can pass through and alter the past.
Doug then tracks the culprit through the past and begins chasing him in the present. Eventually, like many time-travel stories, it leads to a climax where you wind up inside yourself and swallow your own tail.
Sadly, the film produced isn't as good as Terry Rossio and Bill Marsili's screenplay, but some of the ideas are worth seeing at least once.
