Mind Blowing

Rating: 10/10 (10 July 2012)

Take a dash of "The Matrix" and "The 13th Floor," add a smidgen of "Sphere," "Donnie Darko" "Frequency" and "Paycheck" and, voila, you have "Source Code". Jake Gyllenhaal plays "Colter Stevens," an Army helicopter pilot whose last memories are flying sorties in Afghanistan, but suddenly finds himself in the body of a schoolteacher on board a double-decker commuter train speeding toward Chicago. Sitting opposite him is "Christina Warren" (Michelle Monaghan), a friend the schoolteacher has known for a couple of months. Eight minutes pass with no significant incidents, when suddenly the train explodes, incinerating everyone on board. Colter Stevens then himself strapped inside a pod, his only outside communication a webcam connecting to Air Force Captain Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who tells Colter the train was bombed earlier in the day by a terrorist and that, using his acute powers of observation, Colter must discover the identity of the bomber to prevent an even worse disaster. Colter not only takes on this mission for himself, he determines to discover the nature of what happened between his mission in Afghanistan and his current presence inside the pod.
To reveal more would spoil the film. Let us just say it has a lot to do with the nature of "reality" as it pertains to quantum physics and Jewish Khaballah, that moment-to-moment reality is determined by consciousness.
This is a "small" movie with big ideas. Like "Groundhog Day," Colter keeps relieving the same experiences, expanding the possible outcomes in order to accomplish his mission. Production values are superb and the small supporting cast is professional, bringing just the right nuances to thinly written characters to make them believable. Gyllenhaal and Monaghan have great chemistry, thankfully, as they have little time to establish their relationship, due to both the repetitive nature of their scenes and their time apart in order to produce the necessary variances in the 8 minute segments.
Many, especially those bound in causality and linear thinking, will find themselves baffled by this movie, particularly the ending. No, this isn't really about "parallel universes" or "time travel," it is about the nature of consciousness as it relates to quantum probabilities. All life is lessons and the "reality" we see depends upon the lessons we need to learn. We truly are "a thought in the mind of God" and our fate can be changed from instant to instant. That is the lesson of "Source Code" and that lesson alone is worth a "10," in my book, anyway.