Source Code

You have to give yourself in to a movie like this one. You actually have to give yourself in to most movies, otherwise it just comes across as a hell of a lot of work put into a massive contrivance. But especially within the genre of sci-fi, you have to believe what you would otherwise deem ridiculous. With the new sci-fi movie, SOURCE CODE, the ridiculous is made plausible and intriguing. The premise is of a soldier who can return to the last eight minutes of a dead man's life, and act as he would in it. He uses this technology (crafted by a scientist played deviously by Jeffery Wright) to return to the last eight minutes of a man on a train that is about to blow up, and find the source of this explosion, and who's behind it. The beginning of SOURCE CODE is quite awkward, and it takes a while for the film to grab you with its idea. The man within the 'source code' is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who adds a nice humanity to the film. But whenever Gyllenhaal tries to go after the bomb, he is mired down by the thought that everyone on the train is dead and there's nothing he can do about it. After repeating the sequence so many times, he begins to care for the woman sitting next to him (Michelle Monaghan is a perfectly cast role). The film is directed by Duncan Jones, who made the brilliant 2009 sci-fi movie MOON. SOURCE CODE is a step down, but the ideas that Jones brings to the story are as new as the ideas he brought forth in MOON. This elevates the film from just a standard thriller to a frustratingly compelling parable on the soul. SOURCE CODE is a excellently crafted film, and one of the better films of 2011.
Source Code: ★★★1/2