Déjà Vu

Tony Scott’s film puts ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), investigating a ferry bombing in New Orleans, inside a secret unit whose surveillance system replays the past few days. For a long stretch it is a watching procedural: Carlin falls for Claire, killed before the blast, by viewing her last days, and only gradually does the system prove to be a window in time. The watched past has its own texture: the production used film stock, but the surveillance views and night scenes were shot on a digital Genesis camera. The opening blast used a real, empty ferry on a controlled stretch of the Mississippi and 16 cameras; effects supervisor Marc Varisco says passengers, cars and the sinking stern were added later. Scott said the script was set on Long Island until he chose New Orleans to make the city a third character. After Katrina he wanted more of the damage in the story, some of it pulled back as a distraction, and placed Jim Caviezel’s villain in the Ninth Ward. Washington said the lab scenes were shot in Los Angeles in the last month. A good fit if a romance that grows across a monitor sounds interesting. Not for anyone who needs the final image of the same man in two timelines explained.