By Desson Thomson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 22, 2006

So why is Denzel Washington traveling through time in his boxers? That's the $64,000 question in "Deja Vu," as we find the star squeezing into a time-transportation chamber dressed only in cute little drawers.

Sure, there's an explanation for his spartan attire -- something to do with reducing the drag on energy. Warp-speeding into yesterday, apparently, will put the burn on a jacket and pants. But we suspect the real reason has to do with the bottom (forgive us) line: What better way to pack in the Denzel fans than to build a little near-nudity right into the plot?

Unfortunately, the terrorist drama lives up to its name. We've seen all these superficial diversions before -- explosions, car chases against traffic, the world of cutting-edge surveillance.

That's because the movie was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, whose résumé is filled with movies ("The Rock," "Con Air," "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor") built for speed rather than thought, spectacle instead of credibility. Their formula is Pavlovian -- we're supposed to respond to the same entertainment values each time. So when "Deja Vu" forces something as thematically intellectual as time travel into its thrill-a-minute machinery, there's a grinding of gears. We don't believe one ticking minute of it.

Not that we believe anything about this movie. ATF agent Doug Carlin (Washington) goes back in time, we learn, to unravel a crime. Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) is as beautiful as she is dead when Doug finds her washed ashore, following the terrorist bombing of a ferry under the Crescent City Bridge in New Orleans.

Forensics show that Claire was murdered before that heinous act and, Doug believes, she may have had dealings with the mysterious triggerman himself. Traveling back in time to retrace the dead woman's steps could save the 543 lives lost on the Alvin T. Stumpf, identify the killer and, most important, bring Claire back among the living.

Holy deus ex machina! It just so happens the FBI is developing technology to allow people to review events of four days past -- sort of a giant TiVo that enables Doug to watch Claire just days before she died. But for Doug, who starts developing feelings for her, it's not enough to observe. He's got to transport himself there, stop the killer and save the girl. But how? That's when he volunteers to be their time-traveling guinea pig, scrunching down into what looks like a front-loading clothes dryer.

"Deja Vu" director Tony Scott (who directed Washington in "Man on Fire" and "Crimson Tide") and screenwriters Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio attempt to explain the "science" behind the movie's time-jumping, but in a drama that's contemporary and supposedly realistic, it comes off pure cockamamie.

Worse, the Bruckheimerian hyperbole actually offends. Moments before the initial explosion, for instance, we watch slow-motion montages of the doomed men, women and children laughing and hugging; an old man reaching out -- in slo-mo, of course -- for his adorable, backlit grandchild. And when the bomb rocks the ferry, it's time for an operatic sequence of flying bodies, undulating waves and freeze-frame images. After 9/11, few of us look at terrorist acts casually. It's insulting to watch this grandiloquent pornography, using shock value and Hollywood cliche to evoke poignancy.

Doug's beyond-the-grave relationship with Claire is just as counterfeit -- the filmmakers seem more tickled with the coolness of 3-D surveillance than meaningful romantic development. There's Claire, a hologram ghost, puttering around her house, making phone calls, dressing and undressing. And there's Doug. Watching. He may think of this as mystical love, but it sure looks to us like high-tech stalking.

Washington gives "Deja Vu" more oomph than it deserves. He's persuasive in subtle ways, showing the audience with facial expressions and tones of voice that he's falling in love with Claire while ostensibly searching for clues. But love, last time we checked, has to do with getting to know someone, not just holding her hand and running away from burning fireballs.

Deja Vu (128 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images and some sensuality.