It’s BACK TO THE FUTURE meets SE7EN in a time-traveling thriller whose biggest surprise is that Hollywood hasn’t picked it up for an English-language remake. (Nothing for Morgan Freeman, but Brad Pitt just right for the lead.*) Admittedly, logic falls short next to story complications, but concept & execution make up for a lot, as does a pleasing touch of romantic melancholy. Jean-Hugues Anglade is just right as the veteran detective working a new murder with a familiar M.O. It’s déjà vu all over again, reflecting back to the serial killer case he botched 20 years ago. Then, stopping in the middle of a bridge to investigate an abandoned van, he’s conked on the head and falls in the drink before inexplicably reaching shore not in the present, but twenty years in the past. (None of this metaphysical hooey given even a cursory explanation; instead, it's enough that everybody chain smokes and uses land lines.) The time leap puts him right back on that old case, now twenty years wiser and theoretically able to prevent a murder or two. Only problem: how can he know this stuff and not be fingered as the serial killer? Worse, he’s in constant danger of bumping into . . . his younger self. Yikes! Fortunately, nobody in the film seems to have changed jobs or address in twenty years (his key still works in his doorlock), and that fairy-tale pretty psychologist who was his witness in the present, is just starting in the same profession as a novice. If only he could get her trust, get her to believe him . . . and not fall in love. Yikes, again! As mentioned, not all the twists & turns add up, but most of this is stylish fun with good suspense and a storyline unafraid to break the time continuum and alter the future. Once we've jumped back to the present, the film’s moved on from FUTURE and 7 to THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR/’47 (where a ghost waits for his beloved to come to him) and HERE COMES MR. JORDAN/’41 post-reincarnation mumbo-jumbo when only boxing manager James Gleason retains an inkling of something lost. Credit co-writer/director Germinal Alvarez with treating the supernatural with gritty no-frills realism and a soupçon of clear-eyed sentiment.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *If they did remake this in Hollywood with Pitt, you can bet they’d muck things up with digital de-aging for Brad, technical dazzle and pseudo-scientific explanations.
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