Groundhog Rashomon Monkey Deja Quantum Primer Code

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2013)

Duncan Jones directs "Source Code". The plot? A terrorist plants a bomb on a train. The bomb explodes, killing several hundred people, including passenger Sean Fentress. When the terrorist reveals that he shall soon detonate another bomb, a secret Government Agency springs into action. In their possession is a supercomputer dubbed Source Code. Source Code, we are initially told, allows its "pilot" to "enter memories" once belonging to recovered, dead bodies. As Sean Fentress' body is the only body on the train not to have been completely pulverised, it is selected to be used by Source Code. The plan? Army Pilot Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) will use Source Code to "go into Sean's memory". Once there, he will search Fentress' head for clues which will hopefully allow law enforcement officers in the present to stop the terrorist and thwart his second detonation. Sounds familiar? The plot's Tony Scott's "Deja Vu", mixed in with a little "Rashomon", "12 Monkey's", "Quantum Leap", "Primer" and "Groundhog Day".
Like "Deja Vu" it is also eventually revealed that the supercomputer in question is a lot more powerful than its creators perceive. Source Code (again like "Deja Vu") isn't simply creating an interactive simulation based on Sean's memories, instead it's actively creating a wormhole which allows Colter to travel back in time and into a parallel, alternate universe. In both films there are temporal limitations as to how long this "gateway" can be left open and in both films a new parallel time-line is created every time our hero "jumps" into an alternate universe. In "Source Code's" case, Colter repeatedly relives the last 8 minutes of Sean's life, until, of course, he collects enough clues to stop the terrorist. As his body is dying in the present (his helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan), Colter asks to be left inside Source Code. Here he is a given a cutesy "happily ever after climax". This climax ignores a bevy of interesting points. Firstly, if we allow for parallel universes, Colter's actions were entirely pointless; the terrorist succeeded in any number of alternate time-lines and our Colter only in one. Secondly, for Colter to continue living in his new, parallel universe, he would have usurped and effectively killed Sean, whose body he now possesses. Thirdly, as Source Code triggers the creation of parallel universes, and as it actively creates alternate realities, during every one of Colter's jumps he would have triggered a whole new round of train explosions. The guy's practically a mass murderer.
Duncan's film is at its best when its evoking Hitchcock, specifically the aesthetic of "North by Northwest" and the tone of "The Lady Vanishes". His aesthetic is one of clean lines, lots of horizontals and verticals, lots of nice, uncluttered aerial footage (of train lines and well manicured landscapes), and some of his architectural choices (Millenium Park, The Cloud Gate) are somewhat interesting (a kind of contradictory, postmodern futurism). The film's classier than Tony Scott's "Deja Vu", but the sleazy nature of Scott's film also made it a bit better; less pretentious and free to go odd places. "Source Code", in contrast, is repetitive, overstays its welcome and pretends to be about a hero who cheats chronology in order to save the lives of strangers, yet is quite cynical in the way its train passengers are repeatedly collected and coldly murdered/dispatched. The film's part of a wave of time travel movies, all of which tap into a very specific fantasy. Like the tag-line to "Quantum Leap", these heroes "leap from life to life, time period to time period, striving to put right what once went wrong". It's the fantasy of a military industry complex that, not content to neurotically control everything in the present, must reach far into the past, future and even alternative realities, all to stop terrorist bogeymen.
7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.