A surprisingly intelligent and dense sci-fi thriller.

Rating: 9/10 (23 April 2011)

I'll start this off by saying that I love Moon to death, and while I trusted Duncan Jones, after the first trailer for Source Code I was just expecting something very ordinary and disappointing. This is the part where I say that the movie surprised me in every way almost immediately. It is highly intelligent, quite unique and, like Moon, really catches you off guard in the last act with a lot of emotional weight. The story seems standard at first: Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is part of a new military program entitled Source Code, which has the ability to send him into the body of another man within the last eight minutes of his life. The life of this man is ended by a bomb planted on a train, and Stevens has to figure out who the bomber is so they can stop another imminent attack. Pretty immediately, the audience finds out that Stevens has no idea what the Source Code is, and can't remember anything beyond being on a helicopter with his unit. This is where the film starts to hit it's finest aspect.
While the whole mystery of the bomber on the train is always intriguing and you find yourself playing along with Stevens, checking out every passenger and trying to figure out which one of them is a snake in the grass, the story outside of the Source Code is what ends up being the ultimate mystery. How did he get in this program? Where the hell is he? Who is this beautiful woman (Vera Farmiga) whose motives are hard to discern and the mad scientist (Jeffrey Wright) looming behind her? As much as I enjoyed the scenes on the train, the most interesting part for me was by far everything between the flashes back to those eight minute rushes to stop the explosion again. The film never stops moving, whether you're on the edge of your seat trying to figure out what he can find out on the train before it explodes, or you're on the edge of your seat praying that he can put the pieces together of what the situation in his real life currently is. Instead of getting bogged down in exposition explaining all of the complex aspects of it's logic like Inception did, it goes the exact opposite way by turning that need for an explanation into the most exciting mystery of the film.
The final act is an insane rush, throwing out a ton of turns and real "Holy..." moments that had me just desperate for more. The film is a real piece of science-fiction brilliance, another phenomenal entry by Duncan Jones into a genre that has really been slacking this past decade. Gyllenhaal is an actor I always find really likable, but rarely see displaying a lot of emotional strength, and this role is pretty much perfect for him. He gets to show off those classic American protagonist chops for the most part, constantly keeping you with him all the way and even providing some nice little bits of comedy, and then in the last half hour he hits some real high points of emotional depth. It's a great role for him and he nailed every beat. The rest of the cast is a little lacking, but the characters aren't all that deep. Farmiga, always impressive, does what she can with a role that works mostly underneath the surface, as the audience is never allowed to know exactly what's in her head. Wright pours on the looney toon act a little thick and I never understand why characters like this are allowed to be in charge of anything, and Michelle Monaghan surprisingly gets you invested in her romance with Gyllenhaal despite not having a lot of layers on the page for her character.
I really wasn't expecting much going into the film, and my low expectations allowed me to be knocked off my feet by how great Source Code ended up being. With a solid lead performance by Gyllenhaal and some excellent sci-fi twists and turns, it kept my heart pumping and my head racing all the way until the end. The ending was a little too schmaltzy for me, but that's easy to look past when everything else was such a rush. There's a lot more actual science-fiction than I was expecting, which was a great surprise since the trailer for the film made it look like it was mostly going to be this action flick on a train. It's definitely a great film on it's own, a nice companion piece to Moon and all around just a phenomenal sophomore picture from Duncan Jones, proving that his first work was no fluke and he is one of cinema's best new talents.