Very clever and human, yet a bit flat sometimes

Rating: 8/10 (12 July 2011)

I have mixed feelings about source code. I enjoyed the overall story, I found the actors extremely good (Gyllenhaal and Farmiga in particular) and appreciated the facts that the script wasn't too sci-fi oriented and used the quantum physics only as a background rather than the center plot of the story.
There were twists I liked, and other I liked less: to me, the film would have been perfect if it ended when the image froze, it would have been more powerful in my opinion, since it would have reinforced the "human" aspect of the movie.
I somehow found the movie a little soft at times, particularly in the end, but I never got bored, not even got bored by the many repetitions of the 8 minutes, since the realization and story is clever enough to make them anything but repetitive.
The discussion between Colter Stevens and Goodwin were parts I really liked, and seeing Goodwin's armour piercing little by little as she "talks" with him was very effective and subtly done. As said earlier, Gyllenhaal excels at playing the disoriented captain, and reminded me of an older version of his Donnie Darko.
Source Code is thus a good but not exceptional movie, that is definitely worth watching.