Aaaagh! It's in my head!

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2011)

Captain Colter Stevens wakes up on a train next to an attractive woman he seems to know relatively well, apart from the fact that she keeps calling him Sean, what's with that? Oh and he doesn't know who he is or how he got there, and after a mere 8 minutes he is ripped apart along with every other passenger on the train by a huge explosion. He then "Wakes up" in some kind of capsule to be told he is part of a test operation called Beleaguered Castle and what he has experienced is reality inside what's called the source code and is reliving the last 8 minutes of life of some other poor soul who was killed on the train. His mission, find and identify the bomber.
And that's it. Owing more to the Matrix than inception the writer, Ben Ripley, and Director, Duncan Jones have crafted an almost top-drawer thriller that stays with you long after you've left the cinema. Unlike some of the other semi-recent disaster/thriller's I have seen, namely "Knowing" and "The Adjustment Bureau" the problems that both those films had was the reliance of some kind of benevolent alien/god type figures controlling everyone's lives. This film sweetly side-steps that pitfall and so were just left to enjoy the tense tale of this man's last eight minutes on earth. The direction is tense, claustrophobic at times but, like Jones' previous effort, "Moon", it's the humanity at the heart of it that pulls us in.
Credit to Gyllanhall (Is that spelt right?) for giving yet another interesting performance but also credit due for me to Vera Farmiga who as his superior gives a performance that in a way everything hinges on. In many ways she is the unsung hero of this film and she, probably more than the cute looking Monaghan is really the second co-star. Everyone else does there job well, but the best thing about this film is that I found it stayed with me long after I'd seen it and was filled with a need to watch is again.
Could have been standard predictable fare, but left me asking more questions at the end of it. Always a good thing.