Movie Review: The Source Code

Summit Entertainment

The Source Code is an entertaining little science fiction film that doesn’t always make sense, but then, science fiction films often don’t. It’s fun to watch, anyway. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier in Afghanistan who wakes up to find himself on a commuter train traveling into Chicago. He is the only one surprised that he is there: turns out that a government technology experiment has spirited him out of his war injured body and into the body of another man, a high school teacher who regularly rides this train. Colter was sent there to complete a mission, which he has eight minutes to get right, but like Groundhog Day, that eight minutes keeps playing over and over again until he has an opportunity to figure the mystery out.

Pretty cool, right? Actually, it is. The whole notion of being able to re-live a bit of time, even if it’s only eight minutes, and having a chance to do things better on every go-round is intriguing. Unlike the Bill Murray movie though, this story has an extra layer: the eight minutes that Colter is reliving aren’t exactly real; they represent the “halo” of consciousness left behind when people die, the last eight minutes of their earthly lives. In other words, all the folks on the train, including the poor old math teacher whose body Colter inhabits, are dead, victims of a terrorist bomb.

This is where you don’t want to start asking too many questions.

Jake Gyllenhaal does a bang up job as the bewildered but purposeful young soldier. He doesn’t understand how the Source Code works (either did I; they kept telling this geeky dude to “fire up the drivers,” and he would hit a few keys on a laptop and away Colter would go. Seems like a pretty pedestrian way to power someone into a metaphysical realm.) But Colter does understand that he has a mission to do: it’s his job to identify the guy who blew up the train before the villain goes on to ignite a dirty bomb over the city of Chicago. Train explosion is the past, but the destruction of Chicago is the future, and the military puppeteers who are pulling Jake’s strings are trying to save the city.

So Colter works his way through the train, eight minutes at a time, harassing passengers and rifling backpacks, generally acting deranged, much to the amusement and occasional alarm of his seatmate, Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), a young woman who clearly has a crush on the man Colter is supposed to be. And here’s where things get sticky, because after spending say, 40 minutes with this woman on a kind of repeat shuffle, Colter is smitten and he doesn’t want her to die. Even though she is already dead.

Again, better not to get too inquisitive.

Vera Farmiga is wonderful as the military officer who is responsible for giving Colter his orders. We mostly see her face on a small video screen, but she is calm and persuasive, determined to keep the disoriented soldier on track even as she shows glimpses of sympathy for his perplexing situation. In the end she is as much the hero of this piece as the soldier boy. Source Code is a fun night out, worth seeing on the big screen. It had a decent opening weekend so it is still playing pretty much everywhere. B+