Source Code: Strangeness on a Train
Source Code rethinks Groundhog Day as a thriller, posing the question: what if, instead of covering a lame news story, Bill Murray had to stop a terrorist strike?
Canny psychological thrillers don’t come often enough, which makes Source Code a rare treat which recalls bits of Memento, Inception, and Hitchcock movies like North by Northwest.
For an Army captain named Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), the situation is getting stranger and stranger on a train. He awakens on a commuter railway car where a cute brunette (an especially warm and likeable Michelle Monaghan) is chatting with him like an old pal. He has no idea who she is and she seems to think he’s a guy named Sean Fentress. Yet when he looks in the mirror, he sees someone he doesn’t recognize (a different actor pops up as Gyllenhaal’s reflection, in the first of many simple but effectively unnerving touches). Moreover, the train he is on is never going to reach its destination in Chicago.
Capt. Stevens, a veteran of some heavy fighting in Afghanistan, finds out that he isn’t actually on the train; his body is locked inside what appears to be some kind of capsule where his only source of communication is with an Air Force captain named Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) who gives him instructions over a TV monitor. Via her and her boss, a hesitant scientific mastermind named Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), Capt. Stevens finds out that his consciousness is being catapulted out of his mind and inserted into the body of Sean like a player in a video game. The scene on the train is a mere simulation of events that occurred before a major terrorist attack. It’s Capt. Stevens’s most vital mission to go into this simulation or Source Code to find out who is behind the impending strike, but he has only eight minutes to do so before the program ends and he has to start over.
One flaw with this usually smart and expertly paced film is that Stevens seems to have an infinite supply of chances to go back on the train to find out what is happening, albeit eight minutes at a time. Couldn’t anybody crack a mystery given enough time?
But as in Groundhog Day, each visit to the same situation plays out slightly differently as Stevens starts to piece clues together. One interlude is a waste of our time, when Stevens suspects a swarthy man of being the terrorist and harasses him. This situation is an obvious red herring because as all experienced moviegoers know, there is an all but total ban in Hollywood on presenting anyone who looks like he might be an Arab or a Muslim as a terrorist. (Suggestion for a brilliant whodunnit: Have a Muslim actually be guilty of something. It’ll be a shocker.)
If you’re looking for serious versions of Groundhog Day, don’t forget the “Day Break” series from ABC, wherein the hero re-awakens on the same day to eventually foil a plot to… well, you should really rent the series and watch it yourself. It’s a goodie!
Thanks for the tip. I checked, it’s a Netflix instant play. Tonight’s entertainment!
Actually, two recent movies had Moslems as the bad guys: Taken and From Paris With Love. I’m not sure about the latter, but Taken was one of the most profitable movies in recent years, so maybe political incorrectness is financially worthwhile.
Inception was a lousy movie. I really am beginning to hate all of these supernatural movies loaded with special effects. More and more, Hollywood is using special effects as a replacement for an actual plot with decent characters. You said that, “Capt. Stevens was a veteran of some heavy fighting in Afghanistan.” So here’s a thought. Why not make an actual, realistic, and truthful movie ABOUT the heavy fighting IN Afghanistan. Haven’t heard of any, have you? But we get more and more supernatural crap like Inception. Maybe reality is the way to go these days. Remember, you Hollywood types out there, The Hurt Locker got a bunch of Academy Awards. So why not try a little reality for a change?
“Jones leaves the details behind the motive unsatisfyingly general”
Isn’t that the achilles heel of all Sci-Fi? Why blur backgrounds and plots and persons when the real world has more clarity of each, with all their twists and turns, than all our imaginations put together could come up with?
That said, your review makes even this realist want to see the film.
sounds like a mash up of ground hog day and quantum leap.
I feel like I’m stuck in Groundhog Day too. Only in this quite real situation, patriots are trying to find a way to stop Democrats and Muslim terrorists from conspiring together to destroy Judeo Christian civilization.
AMEN! I keep hoping this is a nightmare and that I will soon wake up to a sane reality.
And we should care about this… why?
LibertyShip46: Check out Restrepo. http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/restrepo/
I liked it better when the show was called ’7 Days’
Do you mean the TV series with Jonathan LaPaglia?
Treat yourselves to Run Lola Run.
For heaven’s sake, don’t spend your money on this terrible movie. Hollywood needs to know loudly and clearly that making Americans the terrorists in a movie means death at the box office.
“Source Code” needs to go into the same category as “Redacted” and “In the Valley of Elah” and all the other lame, American-bashing movies that purport to be a commentary on the War on Terror.
I won’t give this lousy movie a dime of my money. I don’t like to be slapped in the face and told that Americans are the true terrorists in the world, when I can look around and see atrocities every day that we valiantly fight against. We, Americans, are in the fight for our lives against evil. This movie says that we are the evil.