Many people could have directed Deja Vu, the new sci fi romance action thriller with Denzel Washington as an ATF agent who time travels in order to squash a terrorist attack. It’s the sort of idea that would appeal to numerous directors. For example, if Terry Gilliam had directed the film, it would end tragically, with time ineluctable and resistant to revision (as in his film 12 Monkeys), the lovers dying and the explosion going off as planned. If Brian De Palma had directed it, Deja Vu would have devolved into Denzel Washington learning that his best friend had sold out and helped the terrorists, and evil would once again triumph. If Michael Mann had helmed the film, the focus would be on the wear and tear on the team of agents, their exhaustion and the lack of appreciation for their labors. If Tony Scott had directed it, the film would be a non-stop tapestry of visual effects, MTV editing, and even text and other advertising techniques across the screen.

In fact, Tony Scott did direct the film (from a script credited to newcomer Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio, who wrote Small Soldiers, Shrek and numerous other kids films). But it is a different Tony Scott from the one you may be familiar with from recent films such as Domino and Man on Fire, where he tries to outdo Oliver Stone in visual pyrotechnics (but even Stone has calmed down of late). The downshift in gears may be due to the fact that the narrative is so complex, to augment it with visual tricks would be to further burden an already taxed viewer with even more impediments to clarity.

Denzel Washington plays Doug Carlin, a New Orleans ATF agent investigating the bombing of a ferry on Fat Tuesday. Soon enough he is approached by alleged FBI agent Pryzwarra (a puffy Val Kilmer), who tells Carlin about a new government technology that allows them to essentially videotape the recent past, but only exactly four days and X hours into the past. Through these technologies, Carlin is able to explore the case of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton, of Hitch), whose body was found the same day as the terrorist attack (we used to call it sabotage), yet whose corpse bore evidence suggesting a connection with the attack. As Carlin studies her life (and falls in love with her), he yearns to find a way to go back and save her. The rest of the movie plays on that possibility. Here’s a hint: call him Saint Elsewhere.

It’s a clever script that plays fair with the audience, once you get past the idea of time travel in the first place. It also links up with, and completes a trilogy of Scott’s recent forays into Stonian cinema of paranoia in films such as Enemy of the State and Spy Game, but it takes a softer stance. The massive intrusion that the so-called Snow White technology offers is only for the good, and maintained by essentially loyal hardworking Americans.

On the zeitgeist level, the film ties in with recent cultural products such as the British crime series Life on Mars (to be remade for the American market) and Day Break, a kind of Groundhog Day policier for network television. Why the sudden interest in time travel and rectifying mistakes? Perhaps we are all suddenly taking life more seriously within the current climate of war and terror and wish we could make the right decisions as we stumble though the day, with the option of fixing things if we totally mess them up anyway. Of course it is impossible, and the tragedy of life is that we have but this one chance.

Anyway, it’s a terrific movie, perhaps a tad slow in its second quarter, revivified by a scene that is half gratuitous chase sequence and half deeply clever and mulit-layered. The love story is quite poignant, and the various deaths evoke memories of the darker elements of supposedly light fare on similar themes such as It’s a Wonderful Life. The cast is uniformally excellent and naturalistic, and it’s one of the best films of the already bloated holiday season so far.

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