Source Code

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2011)

I saw a short review for this film on Film 2011 with Claudia Winkleman, but I wasn't sure what to make of it, but hearing a bit I guess I got more interested, so I decided to go and see it, from director Duncan Jones (Moon), David Bowie's son. Basically American army helicopter pilot Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a commuter train sitting next to Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), she is calling him a different name, and he sees in the mirror he has assumed another man's identity. Eight minutes pass, and the last things he sees is a train passing, and suddenly the train explodes, and he wakes up in a dark pod, and he talks to someone called Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) who wants to know if he knows who caused the train to blow up. She explains that a bomber has threatened to set off another bomb somewhere, and until Colter discovers this knowledge, he will be sent back to the same time, all events repeating again, until he finds the bomb and the man controlling it. So the events in the eight minute time repeat many times, he finds the bomb in the carriage toilet above in a vent which has a mobile phone timer, and the bomber is extremist passenger Derek Frost (Michael Arden). When Colter returns to real time in the pod he tries to piece together what he remembers last in his past real life, and work out who is controlling this new technology, including with Goodwin and scientist Dr. Walter Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright). Rutledge tells him that he cannot change the future, as he is working with what is called the Source Code, a technology that is made by placing his mind into that of a person who has eight minutes of memory before they are medically dead, obviously the memory is that of the man with Colleen. Throughout the repeated events Colter slowly finds himself falling for this woman who believes he is the other man, but against the orders of the technology minds he is sure he can change events. So in what he requests to be his final sending back, Colter catches the bomber, disconnects the bomb, and what would have been the final minute does not discontinue, and in this new time zone he carries on living. In the end you discover that Colter was essentially on life support in the Source Code pod, and the final moment sees that the text message he sent in the memory time does go to Goodwin, saying that it works better than they thought. Also starring Russell Peters as Max Denoff and Cas Anvar as Hazmi. Gyllenhaal gives a good modest performance, Monaghan is good in her time on screen too, if you took elements from Déjà Vu, Murder on the Orient Express and Groundhog Day then that sums up the film as a whole, the story is patchy in places, and the ending could have been a little improved, but overall, not a bad science-fiction drama at all. Very good!