Many critics will dismiss Déjà Vu as nonsense, but I won’t be one of them. It’s 128 minutes long, and most films of that duration lose me at some point, if only for a few minutes. This one did not. I was on the edge of my seat all the way, fully entertained. I could pick the screenplay apart for this and that incongruity; instead, I eagerly await the DVD edition.

Denzel Washington, who seems typecast these days as a law officer, plays Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agent Doug Carlin. The scene is a New Orleans still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. A ferry filled with sailors and children explodes off shore. Oh -- have I mentioned that Déjà Vu was directed by Tony Scott and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer? So when I say explosion, I mean EXPLOSION. In a film from either of these gents, such things are never done halfway.

Everyone recognizes the ferry’s destruction as an act of terrorism. Carlin gets hooked up with FBI agent Andrew Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) and learns about a secret government surveillance program whose technicians have discovered that, by using overlapping satellite images, they can see four days into the past. But they can’t replay anything; it only plays forward.

Carlin and the agents begin to search the past for the terrorist(s). They focus on one young woman, Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton), who was found dead near the ferry and obviously had something to do with the explosion. They can see her alive four days before. Carlin becomes obsessed with Kuchever, and then falls in love with her. He eventually figures out a way to go back in time to be with her, and to perhaps avert her death and the act of terrorism.

It’s here that the classic paradoxes of time travel arise. Can someone change the present by altering the past? Can that person exist simultaneously in the past as his past self and his visiting future self? Would he be one person or two? The writers, Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio, do a good job of presenting such ideas without giving any textbook answers. Many questions are raised that should make for lively conversation.

Though so far Déjà Vu might sound like a science-fiction movie, it is not. It’s a hard-driving Bruckheimer action flick that happens to include some science fiction. The typical Bruckheimer action sequences include a unique sort of car chase: Carlin, driving a Humvee that’s been souped up in a lab, tries to chase the terrorist, who’s in another time. Carlin drives in reverse for much of the chase, in the process creating a lot of havoc. Those who love car pileups will be pleased. Later, there are some good shoot-outs and another ground-shaking EXPLOSION.

Though they haven’t entirely succeeded, Bruckheimer & Co. have tried to pay as much attention to the script and the characters as they have to chases and explosions. The acting is excellent throughout; each actor turns in serious work. Because the director is Tony Scott, Déjà Vu is cut and paced so rapidly that you might feel confused at times, but you’ll always be intrigued to see what will happen next. If you can park your logic and ride along with the screenplay’s various premises, you’ll have a good time. Then, like me, you’ll find yourself waiting for the DVD, so you can figure out more of the time-travel paradoxes -- or hear Marsilii, Rossio, and Scott explaining them to you in the commentary track.

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