In his second feature, director Duncan Jones returns to the realm of science fiction but leaves the sterility of outer space for a more pulsating and human environment.
As with his first movie, "Moon," Jones examines a character trying to make sense of a confusing, continually evolving predicament. But whereas the slow-moving world of "Moon" seemed to suspend time and gravity, in "Source Code," Jones throws his protagonist into a time-sensitive situation, hurtling toward destruction.
Jake Gyllenhaal's character snaps to consciousness aboard a commuter train headed for Chicago. Across from him sits a beautiful stranger (Michelle Monaghan) who asks if he is OK. The disoriented Gyllenhaal thinks he is Capt. Colter Stevens, a U.S. helicopter pilot serving in Afghanistan. He most certainly is not. A glance in a mirror confirms this. He looks like Monaghan's friend Sean Fentress.
As Stevens attempts to figure out who he is and why he is on this train, there's an explosion. Everyone has died. Or so it seems.
Stevens awakes in a crude one-man pod under the supervision of U.S. military officials. Air Force Capt. Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) informs Stevens that he is the integral part of a military operation meant to save the endangered train. They intend to launch him back into the consciousness of the man on the train in order to discover the identity of the bomber.
"Every second spent explaining things puts more innocent civilians at risk," she tells him. And, poof, he's back on the train.
Thus sets in motion a "Groundhog Day"-like series of loops in which Stevens tries to save the train's passengers from a grisly fate. The train's explosion, Stevens is told, is just the first in a possible series of terrorist threats.
Although the thriller's conceit clings to some high-level science, the story does not go out of its way to explain exactly how the technical aspects of the experiment known as the Source Code work. We simply know that the project allows for a person to enter the final eight minutes of another person's life. Unlike "Moon," Jones does not spend much energy engaging the audience in the philosophical trappings of his character's dilemma.
Rather, the filmmaker takes the audience on an adrenaline-rush ride, guided by Gyllenhaal. If one were to stop and consider the possibility that Colter could continue returning to the train until his mission is accomplished, the stakes of this race against time would be rather low.
But "Source Code" is less a hard-core sci-fi film that challenges your mind and more one that engages (to varying degrees of success) your heart. As he continually returns to the endangered train, Gyllenhaal's character comes to realize that the only person he can trust is the patient and unassuming Monaghan. Slowly, the two characters form a connection that invests the audience in the undercurrent love story.
Gyllenhaal channels Harrison Ford at his everyman best, combining all-American good looks with a frustrated but winning sense of humor that rallies the audience, as we root for the flummoxed hunk to save the passengers and maybe eventually find some peace amid the unwanted chaos that has upended his sense of being.
The movie wanders into camp at times - the usually brilliant Jeffrey Wright melodramatically plays a ridiculous, moustache-twirling scientist at the controls of the Source Code; a subplot surrounding Colter's relationship with his father feels unearned; and the film's ending dissolves into a cloud of schmaltz.
But Jones proves with "Source Code" that he understands how to pace a traditional thriller, and Gyllenhaal's display of comedic chops, confident bravado and tender sympathies prove that the 30-year-old actor has arrived at leading-man status.
"Source Code"
Our grade: B
Genres: Science Fiction, Action
Running Time: 93 min
MPAA rating: PG-13
Release Date: Apr 1, 2011
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