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Movie Review: Source Code

Gregory Fichter

Playing like the most tragic episode of Quantum Leap ever made, the second film by newcomer Duncan Jones (his first was 2009’s incredible Moon) is an intriguing bit of old-school sci-fi with the considerably raised stakes of our post-9/11 terrorscape. It’s up to Jake Gyllenhaal to save a U.S. city from certain doom, but he’s doing it with some mammoth handicaps as a top-secret government soldier who has been declared dead for the past two months and is currently the guinea pig for an experimental program called Source Code.

One lovely sunny morning in Chicago a massive bomb is detonated, leaving passengers aboard two commuter trains all dead including a young schoolteacher and his potential love interest (Michelle Monaghan). Capt. Coulter Stephens (Gyllenhaal) has been reliving this tragic scenario over and over again in the schoolteacher’s body as the test subject for a radical new technology which has harnessed the brain’s recollections in the last eight minutes of life to be continuously rebooted so that Coulter may go back to the train as many times as it takes to find the bomb and the terrorist. The film avoids Inception-level confusion by keeping the scenario tight and the explanations simple.

The first half of the movie comes into hazy focus as Capt. Stephens continuously awakens to find that he inhabits another man’s body and is the only one who knows that everyone aboard the train is already dead. Using some of the same logic as the existential classic Groundhog Day, Stephens acquires new knowledge on each eight minute pass and finds clues to improve his performance each time. This means that there is a good deal of repetition in the same setting which might wear on some viewers – especially when many of the mini-missions end in a red herring or defeat. It is unnerving to consider that we can get so easily inured to the repeated sight of massive destruction as a symptom of media saturation (“ugh, another explosion, been there done that”).

Each time the train meets its fiery end, Stephens is shocked awake in a bleak sci-fi capsule, monitored and controlled by an eccentric scientist (Jeffrey Wright bringing his usual brilliance to a minor role) and his team captain Carol Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). Displaying a softer heart than the other military scientists, Goodwin is the agent of exposition in the picture, giving us all we need to know by explaining the technology to the dazed Capt. Stephens and letting it slip that he is legally dead. She informs him that the train explosion happened that morning and that there is an imminent threat of a much greater attack if he fails the mission.

Meanwhile, there’s this beautiful woman (Monaghan in a charming but thankless role) sitting across from him on the train every time he awakens. She is a close friend with whom he wants to spark a romance, finding new ways to win her affection each time he is sent back. In an epically calm instance of multi-tasking, he plies his charms on her while scanning the train for signs of villainous behavior. This worked pretty well in Speed, but feels superfluous and awkward in a plot this grim and would be better served by a less sentimental filmmaker like Terry Gilliam.

Once Stephens finally makes some headway into uncovering the bomber’s identity, the film takes on a brisk pace and finds ways to leave the confines of the train, but is hobbled by the inevitable explosion and return back to the command center of “Beleaguered Castle.” Eventually the culprit is uncovered and we feel that the adventure has reached a climax, but the film overstays its welcome in a rushed wrap-up of all of the loose ends involving Capt. Stephens emotional reconnection with his father, the fate of the real Stephens under observation at “Beleaguered Castle,” and of course the resolution of the love relationship that can never truly be.

Though wearying, the busy finale of Source Code does not detract too much from this powerful, intelligent adult thriller. Duncan Jones is a welcome young artist in British cinema, attempting to tell stories of isolation and the limits of the human body within the confines of ambitious genre storytelling. He does not hit the heights of the instant cult classic Moon with Source Code, but continues to put forth a magnificently engaging and thoughtful brand of smart sci-fi that should shame the “Michael Bays” of this world.

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Gregory Fichter

Greg toiled for years in the hallowed bowels of the legendary Thomas Video and has studied cinema as part of the Concentration for Film Studies and Aesthetics at Oakland University. He has hosted the cult movie night "Celluloid Sundays" at The Belmont in Hamtramck, MI. and enjoys everything from High Trash to Low Art.

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