Familiar story but worth watching

Rating: 7/10 (23 June 2011)

Jake Gyllenhaal is a helicopter pilot who finds himself on a train in the body of man who will die along with all the other passengers when a bomb on the train goes off. He has to find the bomb and the bomber and each time he fails he gets sent back in to try again. As he gets to know his fellow passengers he finds himself falling for Michelle Warren.
I really enjoyed this film. The story is a take on the familiar science fiction plot where characters are experiencing a closed time loop, repeating the same time over and over (as seen in several Star Trek episodes and in Groundhog Day) but this film gives it a couple of nice little twists. It is probably a good idea that there is not a lot of detail given of the Source Code process itself. Attempts to explain such impossible things using current science would just not work and you only have to remember The Core to see what that could lead to. I am happy with science being substitute for magic in this type of film. I still wonder why a science technician has to wear in a lab coat in lab with very few chemicals or fluids. I know this just nit-picking but lab coats are utility wear and not a badge of office or a lazy shorthand for scientist.
Nitpicking aside this film is worth watching. There is a bit of tension built up in the hunt for the bomber even if the climax did fall a bit flat. It does raise questions that it didn't really stop to answer about what the Source Code actually did but the twist at the end seemed more of a twist to characters in the film than it was to me because I saw as it as more a narrative inevitability.
Rating 7/10