Source Code

(2011)

Dir: Duncan Jones

 

Source Code is such a positive film. Not positive in its plot exactly, but it’s hard to leave the cinema after seeing it without feeling good about both the world and, more importantly, the future of movies.

It’s pleasing on two fronts. First of all, it continues the trend of intelligence that is slowly creeping back into the realm of big Science Fiction pictures. Christopher Nolan’s Inception obviously set the modern standard last year, but even before that we had the underrated District 9 from Peter Jackson’s South African protégé Neil Blomkamp, and even Duncan Jones’ own Moon; and earlier this year we had the latest Philip K. Dick adaptation in the form of George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau. Intelligent, exciting, slick Sci-Fi thrillers that make you proud to be a fan of the much maligned genre, something which James Cameron’s Avatar and Michael Bay’s Transformers flicks certainly did not. And also, it becomes the second consecutive hit for new director Duncan Jones, and God knows we need more creative brains like him in Hollywood.

Source Code features Jake Gyllenhaal’s Captain Colter Stevens, a US Army Pilot, who wakes up on a train opposite the lovely Michelle Monaghan, who seems to think he is someone else entirely. As it turns out, Stevens is in fact in the ‘Source Code’, a computer programme that allows you to live the last eight minutes of someone’s life. Those eight minutes mean rather a lot on this train, as it is destined to explode, and Stevens must discover the bomber to prevent further attacks.

Some people may decry Source Code for its overly intelligent plot, but that’s exactly what great Science Fiction is. They’re ‘idea’ pictures. And director Duncan Jones has a great one here. It’s hard to describe what is only Jones’ second feature accurately, with its combination of films such as Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, and even the aforementioned Inception blending seamlessly.

Gyllenhaal is fantastic as ever, carrying the film effortlessly, whilst Monaghan is lovely enough as his doomed fellow passenger, and Vera Farmiga’s straight and serious computer programmer provides some much needed restraint amidst all the chaos aboard the locomotive.

Visually Source Code is fairly straight forward, although the scenes of Stevens within the computer system are so dark, grimy and bleak that they are reminiscent of the murkiness of the future world inhabited by Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys.

The ending will no doubt split people right down the middle, but I feel, just like Inception did, that it retains enough sweet, succulent ambiguity to be interpreted in any number of ways, and so long as Duncan Jones doesn’t tell us what is really going on, everyone can go home happy.

**** ¼ / *****

“I was excited at the prospect of a film about the formula for creating the perfect sauce.”

 

Time Travel versus Alternate Reality Travel

 

One of the most overused science fiction movie tropes is that of a good time travel narrative. The once rich seam has been rather relentlessly mined away by many of your budding science fiction writers. The cinematic gold once contained therein has probably all but withered away. So then where to go next? The answer apparently is the direction Source Code takes. The infinite number of alternate (or is it alternative?) realities is the rather mind bending topic this movie attempts to explore. And for the most part it succeeds with aplomb.

Source Code is a big conceptual science fiction story that takes place almost all the time in either a narrow train carriage or in a cramped sardine like pod. The pod and the train are symbolic of the exact situation Stevens himself is in. He appears to be trapped, a prisoner of a military experiment. The reality bending, changing and jumping plot of this movie has an all too familiar effect of forcing you into what I like to call the Inception setting. Although that being said it’s not as ambiguous as Inception by any means. What the source code does is explained pretty comprehensively by the end of the movie. The reality we jump into each time is slightly different as it’s a new reality from the last. The version of Stevens from reality A each time travels backwards in time and then adjacently to form part of a new reality. It’s possible you’ll be left scratching your head by this but not I don’t think in the way Inception did. For a start, we’re never left questioning what is real like in Inception. But nevertheless, Source Code still makes you think and it is a million times more intelligent that a lot of the crap that is out there right now. This is great, solid, science fiction storytelling with a really strong and clever overall premise underpinning it all.

****/*****

 

 

In fact it was only as I was walking home and ruminating over the film’s plot that I detected a few issues that I had with it.

(Spoliers)

One – when disarming a bomb surely you would check to see if it had a back up mobile detonator hooked onto the back of it? Just turn the bag around Jake. Come on!

Two – He finds the bomb straight away and then I guess he forgets about it for most of the movie and only comes back to it much, much later....

Three – When he ventures outside in an early scene he has an absolute bitch death where he falls like a spaz in front of an oncoming train and gets his head caved in. I’m sorry but I just thought that was so clearly contrived. Almost as if the exact same scene from Final Destination 3 had got smuggled into the script by mistake.

Four – Whatever happens to Sean Fentress? He’s had his life stolen for pity’s sake. Oh, it’s all fine and dandy if Stevens gets to have coffee with Michelle Monaghan. But what is really strange about all this is that for such a big hero he seem to have no qualms about any of this body swapping skulduggery.

But really I’m just jesting.

 

By not respecting Donnie Darko this may happen to you too.