Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Dir. Duncan Jones
Scr. Ben Ripley
I’ll say from the outset, honestly and openly, that this movie doesn’t really make sense and the ending is naff in the extreme. But, you know what, I simply didn’t care. This is a well-crafted, tense, nicely paced sci-fi film, complete with heart and humour. It achieves intimacy amongst immense chaos – no easy feat. I highly recommend.
Source Code tells the tale (a heart-wrenching tale, in the end) of army helicopter pilot Captain Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) who awakes to find himself on a train in the body of another man. Eight minutes later, the train explodes spectacularly and he awakes again to find himself in a steel pod, dazed and confused. We learn that Stevens is part of an experiment called “Source Code” and he is soon sent back to the start of that eight minutes to find the bomber and help prevent another imminent attack. And again. And again. And again. Through these eight minute stints we learn more and more about Stevens and his condition, about the others on the train, about the terrorist plot and about “Source Code”.
Director Duncan Jones is somewhat of the new whiz-kid on the sci-fi movie block. His movie Moon (see my Top Ten of 2009 - http://theflicks.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-usual-disclaimers-these-are-films-i.html) was an instant classic. And while Source Code is not really in that league, he achieves the same peculiar and surprising intimacy, so often lacking in big budget action films.
The core cast here is small, really just three key players. Also, I would argue, a little unusual. They are all excellent. Monaghan plays Christina, the love interest on the train. She is compassionate and appealing and surprisingly nuanced – after all, she is playing the same eight minutes repeatedly. Farmiga is very good indeed as Goodwin, the main face of “Source Code” for Stevens. I don’t generally love Gyllenhaal, but he is pretty darn good here. It is an extreme emotional and physical rollercoaster for his character and he rolls well with the punches.
If you’re a fan of action sci-fi, I think this film will keep you enthralled. But it’s more than that and, I suspect, will appeal to a wider audience. And if you duck out a couple of minutes before the end, well, it’s probably an even better film.
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Dr Rutledge: This is not time travel. This is time re-assignment.
1 comment:
** SPOILERS **
Yeah, the metaphysics of the world don't really make sense, inasmuch as an entire nested universe seems to be constructed out of some dead person's brain state. (Why would Sean Fentress's brain state contain sufficient data to reconstruct the bomber's mind and memories?)
Once you accept this setup, however, the end isn't necessarily a cop-out. Stevens's mind continues to exist inside the replica world, perhaps indefinitely, and he's talking to a replica Goodwin at the end. Why this world is sustainable without his real world body still being alive is potentially problematic, but the two issues are potentially related. One (or even two) people's minds could not possibly contain enough data to encode a full replica universe, so perhaps something else is happening: some kind of quantum (cough cough mumble) that creates an entire alternative reality using, I dunno, holographic data or...something. And maybe the source code project was deliberately yanking Stevens out of these replica worlds every eight minutes, and with his real world body dead there's now nothing to yank him back out.
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