An Excellent And Exciting Movie That Did Leave Me A Bit Confused

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2011)

I really liked this movie. That's the first thing that needs to be said. The premise is interesting, the story is exciting and the characters are believable (in a sci-fi sort of way) and as a result likable. Jake Gyllenhaal put on an excellent performance in the leading role as Capt. Colter Stevens - a US Air Force pilot who, as the movie opens, mysteriously finds himself not in Afghanistan where he was posted but on a commuter train heading into Chicago - and in someone else's body and life. Gyllenhaal was superb in this role. He literally held the movie together. There were very few scenes in which he wasn't front and centre, so if his performance had been anything less than superb the whole movie would have suffered, but he made this work. We discover pretty soon that something bad is going to happen on this train, and as the story unfolds we learn that Stevens is being used in an experiment called "Source Code" that allows him to experience the last few minutes of someone else's life. The authorities have discovered that there's a series of terrorist bombings planned in Chicago, and in an attempt to thwart them sends Stevens into the last 8 minutes of the life of someone who died on the train in the first of the explosions. Stevens' mission is to figure out who the bomber is, and to do that he keeps being sent back in after his 8 minutes are up to relive the whole time over and over again until he pieces enough together to reveal the bomber's identity.
It's an interesting premise - and it's a good mystery. There was nothing especially that gave away the bomber's identity until it was revealed. It could have been anyone on the train, which is part of Stevens' challenge. Gyllenhaal was teamed with a pretty solid cast. I really liked Michelle Monaghan as Christine - the almost girlfriend of the guy whose life Stevens is thrown into. She did a great job in the part, confused by Stevens' confusion (because he knows nothing about the man's life) but obviously caring about him. Until the end, the temptation to get these two together as a couple was largely left alone, and when it did happen at the end, it was kind of a nice, feel-good ending to a troubling premise that I don't want to say too much about in a review. Vera Farmiga as the Air Force officer who's Stevens' basic contact with the outside world was solid as her character develops an increasing sympathy for Stevens' plight and Jeffrey Wright - while good - came across as a bit of a stereotypical scientist more concerned about his experiments than about how they'll affect others.
I had a bit of confusion over some elements of the plot. I understand that Stevens was being sent to live the last 8 minutes of this person's life, based on the premise that a person's brain lives on for a few minutes after the body dies. OK, but I wondered how they would have been able to access this man's brain memory (for lack of any other way to describe it) since he surely would have been dead longer than that by the time they pulled him out of the wrecked train? I also wondered how Stevens, once in this man's brain memory could do anything other than what the man had done, or could know anything other than what the man knew. Wouldn't his experience be completely dependent on the deceased man's memory and experience? Confusing - to me at least. Otherwise, I thought this was an excellent and exciting movie.