Gripping, Fast-Paced, Futuristic Memory Simulation Thriller

Rating: 6/10 (15 February 2013)

Colter Stevens is an army captain who wakes up suddenly on a Chicago-bound train, unaware of how got there. When a bomb explodes eight minutes later he reawakens in a capsule. It transpires he is an operative in a daring experiment to analyse the brainwaves of one of the train victims in an attempt to unmask the bomber's identity ...
This low-key but exciting thriller is fun, fast, full of interesting ideas and well acted by all four leads. It ploughs straight into the action with no dull establishing shots and keeps on blasting our hero into and out of danger, but thanks to excellent editing by Paul Hirsch it doesn't feel jumpy or disjointed. As we become familiar with the setup and the train's occupants we want Colter to succeed, figure out what's going on and find a way out of the conundrum. The movie gradually and carefully reveals important details until we are truly engrossed in both the killer's identity and Colter's hopeless situation. Gyllenhaal plays is straight down the middle, an ideal sweaty Everyman hero, and the contrast between this and Wright's shifty, diffident, everything-for-the-program chief scientist is excellent. As with many good movies, by keeping the characters, locations and duration to a minimum, all of the intrigue, drama and suspense is ramped up to the max. I do have one problem though and that's the ending, which I must confess I don't understand; the Source Code concept as an interactive playback of a cerebral afterimage is fine. But, as Wright maintains, it's not a time machine, so when the action not only goes beyond the eight-minute limit but also suggests communication between multiple alternate realities it kind of goes off into a fairy tale for me. A lot of fun nevertheless though; a big screen Twilight Zone story for the twenty-first century. Nicely directed by Jones (Moon) and sharply written by Ben Ripley, this is a solid movie and the second best temporal paradox thriller drama with Gyllenhaal in the lead.