Deja Vu

You'll be flooded with nagging feelings of familiarity throughout the latest action-packed blockbuster from director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose previous collaborations include Top Gun, Days Of Thunder, Crimson Tide and Enemy Of The State.

Deja Vu appropriates the loopy science of Minority Report and Back To The Future, and grafts it on to a thriller about a tenacious cop hunting the terrorist responsible for an explosion on a New Orleans ferry.

Screenwriters Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio don't bother to pretend they know what they're talking about. The time-travelling plot is complete nonsense and the film debunks its own confused logic for the sake of a spectacular finale.

Reality creeps into the film every now and then, like the spooky aerial shots of a New Orleans community decimated by Hurricane Katrina.

But for the most part, Scott's film exists within its own deranged parallel universes, where every big action set piece is edited to within an inch of its life and every explosion is replayed in glorious slow motion.

Deja Vu begins with a bomb detonating on a ferry. Special agent Doug Carlin (Washington) from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms And Explosives finds lifeless body of Claire Kuchever (Patton), who was apparently killed by the bomber before the explosion.

Haunted by the face of the dead woman, Doug invests his every waking minute in tracking down the killer.

He encounters FBI agent Andrew Pryzwarra (Kilmer), who heads a team of scientists who can build a bridge' to events which took place four days and six hours ago.

Deja Vu plays to its strengths: Scott's directorial brio and Washington's likeability as a good man living on the edge.

In between the babble about folding the space-time continuum, there are myriad impressive action sequences including a mind-bending car chase.

Apart from Washington and Caviezel, left, who shows a creepy, twisted sense of purpose, the rest of the cast are largely forgettable.