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Paula Patton as Claire Kuchever

Déjà Vu rides the razor's edge between competing theories of time travel: Can the past really be changed? Or will anything you do in the past turn out to be just part of what already happened anyway? The filmmakers spin a slick, engrossing yarn and ratchet up the suspense effectively, but eventually they write themselves into a corner. At some point, they must choose between one ending that follows from everything we've seen, and another ending that gives viewers what they want. Neither is fully satisfying.

There just might be a way out of this dilemma, if the filmmakers were clever enough to find it. Somewhere along the line there needs to be a key turning point between one possible outcome and another, a domino set to fall one way that winds up tipping another, whether due to unpredictable human choices, or even the "divine intervention" ("something spiritual," something "more than physics") that comes up more than once.

Unfortunately, the film never finds that turning point, and a potentially mind-bending sci-fi tour de force breaks down into a fairly conventional suspense thriller, with the hero racing against time to stop a killer before he strikes. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and the film works well enough on that level. On the other hand, the opening terrorist attack on New Orleans perhaps still hits a bit too close to home, in more ways than one, to effectively set the tone for 90 minutes of escapist excitement.

Jim Caviezel as one bad dude

There are other potential drawbacks. The voyeuristic scenes of Carlin and the FBI agents watching Claire in her apartment are milked to an over-the-top degree, with Claire constantly striking glamour-model poses and perpetually in various states of undress, even though she's just hanging around her apartment. Carlin watches, entranced, with easy listening playing on the soundtrack. Even when we first meet her as a corpse on a slab, Claire is somehow presented as a sex object, a fixed expression on her face that hardly seems indicative of her ghastly death.

Then there's the terrorist (Jim Caviezel), who turns out to be (spoiler alert) a Timothy McVeigh psycho-"patriot" who talks about "human collateral" and "the cost of freedom." As with the neo-Nazi villains in the movie version of The Sum of All Fears, Hollywood's taste in bad guys seems increasingly stale and artificial.

If it isn't the brilliant film it could have been, Déjà Vu still contains enough flashes of that film to make it entertaining while you're watching it. On reflection, though, it feels a bit like a shell game in which the conjuror himself has lost track of where the pea is supposed to be.

One thing you have to say about that FBI chronoscope surveillance technology: With its hyperkinetic, weaving, zooming point of view, it's a plot device tailor-made for Scott's jittery visual style. Never mind Doug Carlin: If the FBI ever really does invent a machine like that, they should call in Tony Scott to operate it.

1. When have you wished you could go back in time to change something? Something in your own life, or something on a larger scale? If there are many things you'd want to change, which one would you pick, and why
2. If you could go back in time and change something, would you? Would that be "interfering" with God's plan—or could time travel conceivably be part of it
3. The black clergyman at the funeral in the film says "God calls back the past." Is this literally true? If not, could it be poetically true? What does this language suggest? If God doesn't let us go back and undo events like September 11, what does he ultimately do about them?
4. The villain thinks he is striking a blow for freedom. When, if ever, is violence justified? What is the difference between legitimate violence and terrorism? Is there an objective difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? If so, what

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