We watched Deja Vu from PayPerView a couple nights ago, and then watched it again. It was a very good movie. (Lots of slight spoilers)

Denzel Washington plays an ATF agent investigating a Ferry Explosion. He plays one of those Sherlock Holmes types of agents that can deduce almost anything. This skill attracts the attention of a Government experiment controlled by the FBI (plausibility check here as its unlikely the government would ever trust the FBI this much).

The FBI has this experimental device that allows them to look back in time 4 and a half days and view on a monitor everything that transpired. They want to use this tool to figure out who blew up the ferry, but they don’t know where to look, enter Denzel Holmes.

Denzel has a crush on a dead girl that he met in the morgue. The dead girl appears to be a Ferry Explosion victim, but the funny thing is she died before the explosion. So Denzel has the team check out her apartment four days earlier where they proceed to ‘watch’ her in the past do all sorts of things including taking a shower, which helps cement Denzel’s puppy love for the dead girl. Those Sherlock Holmes ATF types tend to fall in love easily I guess.

Time Travel and Loops and Alternate Branch Theory

Ok, so about this time the geekiness of the movie diverges away from voyeurism taking the off ramp to Eintseinville.

Denzel Holmes discovers that its possible to disrupt or change the past. This leads the FBI, often known for their experimental ways, to agree to send a note back in time to attempt to prevent the terrorist attack.

That of course doesn’t change anything as its already happened. These people are operating on a different branch of time and don’t realize it. Then Denzel Holmes has himself sent back in time to save his new dead girlfriend. He makes it back far enough to make an impact but then the time loops kick in and things get tricky as they always do in movies involving time travel (think Back to the Future, Time Bandits, Superman 2, 12 Monkeys, Peggy Sue Got Married, Army of Darkness, Bill & Ted’s excellent adventures, Planet of the Apes, The Time Machine, Minority Report, Groundhog Day, Time Cop, Terminator series, The Philadelphia Experiment, Dead Again, Black Knight, A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court . . .. You get the idea)

The bottom line is time lines get complicated when things start getting woven together. Any thing is possible as all possible time line realities can exist and therefore its just up to the director and writers to pick their timeline of choice to make the movie do what ever they like.

Deja Vu does whatever it likes, and does it pretty well, even though there are some areas where the plot line is a little unrealistic (not including that whole time travel thing.)

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