Deja Vu (2006)

What if you could watch the past unfold, and what if you couldn't resist trying to change it? Tony Scott's "Deja Vu," his most effective thriller since "Enemy of the State," manages to make time travel feel plausible, partly because its hero spends more time in the present than the past. Denzel Washington, in his third collaboration with Scott, stars as Doug Carlin, a sharp New Orleans ATF agent investigating a terrorist bombing that destroyed a crowded ferry, killing hundreds of passengers. FBI agent Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) invites Carlin to join a secret team with the technology to observe events from several days earlier, while Carlin brings the expertise to make sense of what they see. Then there's the body of a beautiful young woman, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), found near the blast site, and the evidence shows she was killed before the explosion. As the team lets him watch Claire in the days leading up to her murder, Carlin gets to know her and finds himself falling in love. He becomes convinced that the only way to stop the killer, and save her, is to travel back in time. But Pryzwarra's colleague Denny (Adam Goldberg) insists that going back in time is physically impossible - or so he believes. Built around a clever script and a top-notch cast, especially Washington, Patton and a chilling Jim Caviezel as the bomber, the film also finds Scott trimming the excesses of his recent work, like the brutality of "Man on Fire" and the frenetic style of "Domino," reaffirming his reputation as one of the finest action filmmakers around.