Avis Metacritic

Cinema's natural felicities for time and action have seldom felt as beautifully dovetailed.

Unlike the last Scott-Washington matchup, "Man on Fire," Deja Vu boasts a muscular, fast-forward story that won't be overwhelmed by Scott's need for speed in the form of rapid cuts and all that visual fusion that have become his stylistic trademark. Here, the approach is perfectly suited to the picture's time-shifting, multitasking structure.

What is interesting is not how little sense Déjà Vu makes but how little that matters. If you want your films to add up logically, you're welcome to take your calculator somewhere else. But if you do, you will be missing out on some first-class genre fun.

Denzel Washington plays Denzel Washington, good cop. This isn't a great performance, but Washington wasn't brought in to show off his acting chops.

Although the science fiction element had the potential to drag the story down, it's kept to a minimum and left somewhat buried in techno jargon.

It's an almost overwhelmingly professional picture, murderously fast, slick and full of outlandish notions, painstakingly realized. And it's also surprisingly satisfying -- thanks to Washington, a good cast, Tony Scott's swift direction and that unyielding professionalism.

It's preposterous, but never dull: Scott whips the action into a taut, tasty lather.

Déjà Vu isn't as sleek a genre pleasure as "Enemy of the State," but it does have a freaky little trick up its sleeve.

Déjà Vu has enough style and forward (or is it backward) momentum to viewers aroused. It's only after you leave the theatre that your head starts to throb.

The joke of it is, for all the pricey bangs and booms, the whiplash cinematography and the editing that turns film space into cubistic tableaux, a Bruckheimer-and-Scott partnership is only as good as its screenplay, and this one is a mess.