Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright
Directed By: Duncan Jones
Written By: Ben Ripley
Produced By: Mark Gordon, Philippe Rousselet and Jordan Wynn
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Rating: PG-13, for some violence including disturbing images and for language.
Running Time: Approximately 93 minutes
Website: EnterTheSouceCode.com
Budget: $35 million
Genre: Science Fiction/Action/Suspense/Thriller
Release Date: April 1, 2011
British filmmaker Duncan Jones, the son of music legend David Bowie, made his feature directorial debut with the thought-provoking 2009 sci-fi film Moon. The film received glowing reviews and Jones was honored with a BAFTA (Great Britain’s Oscar equivalent) for outstanding debut by a British filmmaker.
His sophomore effort, Source Code casts Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) as a decorated U.S. Army helicopter pilot and Afghanistan war veteran aboard a Chicago commuter train that’s been rigged to explode by a bomb-crazed terrorist that he’s called upon to weed out from his fellow passengers. However, there’s a twist!
At the height of the film, Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal, firing on all cylinders) is suddenly jolted out of a nap he’s taking aboard said train. Disoriented, he’s addressed by a woman named Christina (Chicago native Michelle Monaghan) that he is unfamiliar with but who clearly knows him somehow. He excuses himself in order to go to the facilities, where he is shocked to see an unfamiliar face staring back at him from his reflection in the mirror. He checks his wallet and discovers to his amazement that the man in the mirror (and the man Christina thought she was speaking to) is a teacher by the name of Sean Fentress. Moments later, a massive explosion rips through the train.
End of story, right? As moviegoers quickly discover, there’s more to Source Code than initially meets the eye.
After the explosion, he awakens inside of an isolation chamber. He’s very much alive, but decidedly out of sorts. Unbeknownst to Captain Stevens, the U.S. government has drafted him to be apart of a top-secret program dubbed “source code.” It’s purpose is explained to him by Goodwin (a compelling Vera Farmiga), a straight-laced female intelligence officer who is overseeing his progress, and the program’s calculating founder Dr. Rutledge (an agreeably oily and dictatorial Jeffrey Wright). “Source Code” is not time travel per se, it’s time reassignment according to the good doctor.
So unlike 1994’s Speed, where Keanu Reeves and Oscar winner Sandra Bullock had to keep a rigged Los Angeles transit bus traveling above 50mph to prevent it from exploding, Gyllenhaal’s Captain Stevens is stuck with the unenviable task of having to repeatedly revisit those last, fateful minutes (8, to be exact) before the fatal explosion until he finally pinpoints whodunit and why. Source Code is the sort of mind-bending thriller that requires its audience to stay on its toes. Suffice it to say, if you take a bathroom or concession stand break during the film, do it at the risk of being left out of the loop upon returning.
Despite Jones‘ nimble direction, the intricately plotted film gets a little too clever for its own good and jumps the shark in its final 10-15 minutes. The biggest offense is a shot toward the end involving a frozen image that just does not work at all. It elicited laughs and some groans, which is clearly not what the filmmakers intended. Aspects of the finale seemingly contradict with what has been explained earlier in the film, and there are about three or four end points in writer Ben Ripley’s script, so he clearly experienced some difficulty in figuring out to properly end this otherwise engaging thrill ride.
3 stars
