Superb movie marred by not knowing when to stop

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2011)

Extra spoiler warning.
The titular name refers to a military project to utilize a (fictional) medical phenomenon: the brain of the deceased contains the memory of the last 8 minutes before death, just like a close circuit security TV surveillance video. If another person's brain can tap into these 8 minutes of "security tape", imagine how much good can be done in crime prevention? Research has brought this to the brink of success. The main criterion for the candidate is compatibility to the "object", things like gender, age, physical built. There is one other, which will be revealed later (more spoilers!!)
The movie opens with an immediately attention-gripping score accenting on timpani and brass sending your heartbeat on an acceleration course. The visual is a sequence with overhead shot of sprawling Chicago cross-cutting with a cruising, sleek looking commuter train.
As we get into the story, movies such as "Surrogates" and "Avatar" come to mind. Colter Steven (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up, as if from a trance, in the train and finds that he occupies the body of a man named Sean, talking to a woman called Christina (Michelle Monahgan). As we move along, another movie registers itself: "Groundhog day". The train blows up and Steven finds himself back in the experiment chamber as the candidate for "Source code" mentioned earlier, about to be sent back again, again and again until he finds out who blew up the train.
It is important to point out here that the plot is not about time travel. The explosion has occurred and everybody on the train is dead. This is "time reassignment", whatever that means, as explained in the movie. Steven's mission is not to prevent the train explosion or to save anybody, but only to find out who did it because the perpetrator has something much bigger planned: to blow up Chicago with a nuclear device. Steven's mission is to save millions of lives in Chicago.
This suspense alone is already material for a good thriller but then there is a parallel suspense plot. This unfolds only slowly as the story progresses. What we see on the train is in a sense an illusion. But there is another layer of illusion: Steven in the enclosed experiment capsule wired into an electric circuit connected to Sean's dead brain (not unlike the protagonists in "Surrogate" or "Avatar"). Other than the experiences in the train, the only recent recollection Steven has is doing a sortie in Afghanistan as a fighter pilot. In the project "Source code" capsule, he keeps asking his contact officer Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), whose face he sees only on a monitor, how he has become the candidate of this project. The ominous truth comes out only gradually and this has to do with the one other criterion that I intentionally omitted to mention at the start. More SPOILER! You see, like Sean, Steven is technically dead and just kept brain-active by a life support system. Once his assignment has been accomplished, he will be "allowed to die".
It should now be evident that from this clever plot, a superb movie can be constructed. One has been. The thrills are expected. But there is also poignancy in many ways. The lovely, warm, sunny smile on Monahgan's face makes it convincing that Gyllenhaal's character falls in love with her and wants to save her, if not anybody else, from the explosion. Cliché yet touchingly handled is the remorse of a son for unkind words exchanged with his father in what unfortunately turns out to be their last conversation.
There are also larger matters, moral and philosophical. Ruthless project director Dr Rutleger (Jeffrey Wright) suggests to Steven that he should be happy and thankful for this last chance to serve his country - "patriotism is not everything, it's the only thing" (thanks coach Vince)seems to be written all over his face. Steven in turn asks his own question in the train, to Christina as well as to some other passengers, "What would you do with the last minute of your life"? The ensuing scene is the most poignant of all.
Gyllenhaal is at his best portraying Steven in a complexity that befits the unimaginably complex situation this character finds himself in. Monaghan does not have much challenge in this movie, but melts the audience's heart just by being there. Wright's performance is impressive, even as a somewhat stereotype character. It is Farmiga, however, who deserves special mention. Starting out as quite impersonal, she skilfully let the caring person underneath gradually emerge. While the billing suggests otherwise, she is really the lead actress in this movie while Monaghan is only support, in terms of the demand of the character. But as support, Farmiga is arguably even more deserving for an Oscar nomination than in "Up in the air". Hope she gets one.
Have I missed anything? Obviously: the most important! If this movie is not one of time travel and changing the past, what is all this about Steven trying to save Christina and then, later, stop the bomb on the train? Well, there can be a good solution. In the timeline of the story, Steven, through the project "Source code", finds the information needed and the criminal is apprehended before he can blow up Chicago. The train explosion is something that has already happened and Steven is allowed to die. That is how the movie goes. But in the parallel universe (a theme just as popular as time travel, as fans of Isaac Asimov know), the bomb is stopped and the protagonists live happily afterward. That is also how the movie goes.
Why doesn't it just stop there? The movie makers unfortunately don't have the good sense to stop when things are going well, and add on something that makes an otherwise almost-perfect movie end in an irreconcilable mess. Pity!