Source Code (Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright) – If you saw Vantage PointQuaid and Forest Whitaker or Minority Report with Tom Cruise, you are likely to recognize the concept behind Source Code. My friend, Denis, thinks it’s more like Groundhog Day, but this film is not a comedy; it’s serious. It takes awhile for the audience to understand what is really happening in Source Code. We meet Captain Colter Stevens (always capable, never spectacular Jake Gyllenhaal), a pilot on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan. He seems to be in some kind of capsule, perhaps a decimated cockpit. He is sitting in front of a video screen, on the other end of which is a female military officer, Colleen Goodwin, played by Up In The Air’s Vera Farmiga. He is put through some mental tests, informed about a terrorist plot in Chicago, and sent hurtling across the stratosphere into a commuter train in the Windy City. with Dennis
There, he wakes up with a start and finds himself sitting across from a beautiful woman (Iowa’s own Michelle Monaghan) who treats him like her boyfriend. He has no idea who she is. Random people and events walk through his next few minutes, culminating in an explosion that seemingly kills everyone … except Stevens. He gets hurdled back to the capsule, talking to Goodwin, and trying to make sense of the unfathomable. That is when the audience learns more about his predicament, information that is parceled out in doses on the subsequent trips he takes back to the train. Each time, the scene is ostensibly the same but slightly different (like Vantage Point). But his assignment, as communicated through Goodwin and her boss, an ambitious scientist named Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright in an odd role), is to find the person who explodes the train and who plans to cause an even bigger catastrophe in Chi-Town.
On the train, the people stay the same; their actions differ only slightly; and Gyllenhaal unravels clues each time he goes back. But he wants more. Not only does he want to find the saboteur to save Chicago, he wants to stop the explosion and save the girl (and maybe even other people, too) even though Stevens is told that all of the other people are irrelevant. He tries over and over (hence the Groundhog Day corollary) but we find out that time is running out. He only has eight minutes to solve the mystery each time. What a plot device! The scientist’s breakthrough gives you eight minutes to change history (hence the Minority Report reference). Will he succeed? Will he survive? Can this go on forever? Will he get the girl? Will Chicago be saved?
Those are the questions that keep Source Code exciting. Fortunately, the film is only 93 minutes. The director, Duncan Jones (whose only other movie was the virtually unseen Kevin Spacey/Sam Rockwell sci-fi Moon), understands pacing. So he makes this sci-fi film a fun ride and a race to the finish.