Freaky, Creepy, and Fantastic film from David Bowie's Offspring

Rating: Null/10 (26 August 2011)

At night when I sleep, I usually load up a long playlist of movies I have just downloaded into my VLC Media Player.
This film came up in the playlist at 4:00am - And I had woken up within the first 5 minutes of the film, so I stayed awake and watched this, truly disturbing film.
Jake Gyllenhaal, a few years older (And taller) than he was in "The Day After Tomorrow", is Helicopter Pilot "Captain Colter Stephens". We don't know this at first, he's on a train and he does not know how he got there. Then the train explodes! Jake/Coulter has then to discover he is not where he left himself, which was in Afghanistan flying a Mission - In fact he does not know where he is at all, and the only voice that speaks to him (Vera Farmiga as "Goodwin") will not tell him! "That's Classified" is her answer to his direct question as to his physical location. He is split between two bleak existences: He is in a doomed Train heading for Destiny in Chicago: in which the same events play themselves out over and over again, and alternately he is in a small cold box with a tiny TV Monitor from which speaks Goodwin and sometimes a "Dr. Rutledge" (Jeffery Wright). The only thing Rutledge will tell him, is that he must play out the last eight minutes of the Tran's existence over and over again.
To top it off, while Colter is on the Train, he is not Colter, but "Sean Fentress" - Whose body he inhabits each time he visits the train. It is during these 8-Minutes on the Train, Colter meets and comes to know Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), who sees Colter as Fentress! Confused yet? As with Inception, I had to watch this a second time, and still have not gotten all that is happening, in this very creative tale written by Fledgling screenwriter Ben Ripley and directed by Duncan Jones, who is the son of Alt/Glam-Rocker David Bowie.
This story holds together quite well, despite some continuity problems due to the non-linear nature of the storyline. Some have equated this film to Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys" - But as Terry Gilliam's films are always very dark and hopeless, this film has very bright spots in it, and the ending is a hopeful ending, despite the curious nature of Colter's state of being.
Colter, told by Rutledge he is living in a Simulation, finds that he can affect outcome in the "real world" (He tells Rutledge he will buy him a Pizza) - If Colter's experiences on The Train are simply a "replay" of the last 8 minutes of the Train, as Rutledge insists, and exist only as Source Code in a Computer, then Colter would not be able to change the events which happen on the train, which ultimately effect changes in Rutledge's and Goodwin's reality - And of course "This is not supposed to happen". Rutledge dismisses Colter's claims out of hand, but Goodwin, who is also a soldier, starts responding to direct questions by Colter as to his state and location, and ultimately she believes that he can effect the changes he claims he can accomplish, this belief leads to her giving Colter his last opportunity.
There are a couple of things that bother me about this, they never explain how Sean Fentress's body is able to be inhabited. Rutledge explains it away as Fentress and Colter have similar body and mind characteristics, now this is fine when it comes to explaining Colter, but Fentress... His actual Brain would have to be within proximity of Colter. This is simply, mentioned once, and never explained or mentioned ever again in the film. - How is it that Colter "becomes" Fentress? Perhaps there were 25 minutes of film left on the editing room floor that could explain this, and if that is the case, we'll eventually have to see a version of this film that has the footage restored- The people who edit films never realise, that if you make something believable, people WILL sit in a Theatre for two and a half hours. I think it is the policy of the movie companies, to release as SHORT a Theatrical Release as possible, with the sheer volume of "Directors" or "Alternate Cuts" of just about every film available recently, you can be sure this is the general policy! More showings per day, more buttocks in Seats!