Movie Review: Source Code

Source Code (2011), Rated PG-13
93 minutes
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Directed by Duncan Jones
Reviewed by Dave Felts
Rating: (4/5)

Duncan Jones popped up on the radar in 2009 with Moon, which, while not a commercial blockbuster, garnered notice beyond the walls of geekdom. Science fiction to Hollywood seems to mean replacing guns with lasers, minorities with aliens, and cars with spaceships. Moon was a pleasant departure from that mold, being science fiction for the thinking person, built around ideas instead of action. Source Code is Jones' second film, and while there are explosions a-plenty, it's still science fiction for thinkers.

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a commuter train across from a woman named Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) who evidently knows him. Thing is, Stevens has no idea who she is, or where he is, or how he got there. He catches sight of his reflection, and the face staring back is not his own. A few minutes later a bomb destroys the train.

Stevens recovers awareness again, this time in some sort of capsule that bears a strong resemblance to a cockpit of sorts. A comm crackles, and screen lights, and we're introduced to Air Force Captain Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). Goodwin provides the necessary exposition, and Stevens (and we) learns he's part of a secret project called "Source Code", run by Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright). Through the trickeries of quantum mechanics and human consciousness, Stevens is relocated to alternate timelines, but only for eight minutes. He's being sent to the train for the purpose of discovering who destroyed it in the hopes of preventing future attacks. On each trip, he has eight minutes to figure it out, and he'll keep going back until he does. It's a mission he doesn't remember volunteering for and he's not too keen on the whole situation.

The film is crafted in such a way that we feel Stevens' confusion along with him. We discover things as he does, the story unfolding for us at the same time it as for him. Even though Stevens continues to return to the same time and place, each visit reveals a little more about his antagonist, the people using him, and the technology used to send him back.

Using the terrorist attack on the train, Source Code proposes a not-so-modest exploration of time and space, and how our consciousness interacts with--and maybe even influences--our reality. It poses some interesting questions about the nature of human consciousness, of time and experience. There are the moral considerations of a person being used against his or her will, ostensibly for the greater good, but does that make it all right to do?

If wondering about these things sounds interesting to you, give Source Code a view. If not, stick to Die Hard and Armageddon.