I enjoyed Source Code immensely. It’s a tightly constructed thriller, well photographed on a—comparatively—modest budget, and unfolds its science fiction efficiently and intriguingly, providing several genuine surprises in its brief running time (just over 90 minutes). Without giving away too many of those plot points, since an essential part of enjoying Source Code is seeing just how it all resolves, its greatest strength is in letting its characters make mistakes, and having the big fancy SF technology not work exactly the way everyone seems to think it does; even that’s teetering on the brink of saying too much, so let’s take a step back. Suffice to say, it does not end the way I thought it was going to.
Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal in one of the better performances of his career as an Air Force helicopter pilot who, to great disorientation, wakes up in another man’s body on a commuter train bound for Chicago. A woman (Michelle Monaghan) speaks to him as though they know each other, as do several of the other commuters. Gyllenhaal is still in the process of figuring out what’s going on when the train explodes, killing everyone aboard.
Gyllenhaal snaps awake again, this time in a small, dark enclosed space that resembles a helicopter cockpit in an inexact sort of way. Another military officer (Vera Farmiga) is speaking to him cryptically over a video screen. She and her superiors—led by the eccentric (don’t call him a mad scientist) Jeffrey Wright—need Jake Gyllenhaal to find where the bomb that blew up the train is, and who put it there. And the clock is ticking, since if he fails to find the bomb in time, a dirty bomb will be detonated in downtown Chicago, potentially killing a million people.
The means by which Jake Gyllenhaal is accomplishing this is some very fictional science. Jeffrey Wright has, being a mad scientist, developed a way to interpret the electrical field created by the brain and create a fully immersive virtual simulation of the last eight minutes of that person’s life. Jake Gyllenhaal, as a similar brain type, has been drafted to do the interpretation. Phrases like “quantum physics” and “parabolic calculus” are thrown around to explain; it’s a perfectly tasty SF word salad that makes just enough sense as to not distract from the story (and leads to a couple neat visual metaphors in that ending that I really should shut up about). And Jeffrey Wright would sound cool saying anything, so there’s that as well. However, all this science leads Jake Gyllenhaal to ask some very important questions that no one seems to want to answer, like “where am I?” and “why can’t I remember anything between flying a helicopter in Afghanistan two months ago and here working with you charming, inscrutable people?” And therein lie spoilers.
You can probably sense me chomping at the bit to talk about the ending, because it’s either really smart or really dumb, with no real in-between, and if you all go see Source Code you can enlighten me on which it is. Whichever it is, the 85 or so minutes of movie that lead up to that point are very compelling. Director, writer Ben Ripley, and cast alike all take it easy on the histrionics, resulting in a movie that manages to be both low-key and gripping at the same time.
It also, in a pleasant departure from a lot of contemporary SF pictures that lean too heavily on the special effects, features thought-provoking SF ideas. When Jeffrey Wright describes the science behind the gadget that lets Jake Gyllenhaal go back and explore for eight minutes at a time, he elides over something that he dismisses as irrelevant, but actually is what his invention actually does. Unintended consequences are, of course, something every SF mad scientist since Victor Frankenstein has had to confront at some point or other. Source Code’s take on this is, characteristically, low-key; no monsters are turned loose or anything. But if you see Source Code with a friend, chances are quite high that you’ll exit the theater saying to each other “but, wait….” The good news is, the ensuing conversation will be about very interesting stuff. Just be sure, first, to ignore the fact that you’ve seen the trailers about ten thousand too many times; the movie itself is both more and less, in all the best possible ways. What it really is is a concise, engrossing picture made by people who know and love classic science fiction. It is, in short, a movie aimed squarely at us. And once I figured out (and I think I did) exactly how the ending happened, I realized, it hit the target, dead-center.
Danny Bowes is a playwright, filmmaker and blogger. He is also a contributor to nytheatre.com and Premiere.com.
I saw it tonight myself and I also quite enjoyed it. I think you’ve got a strong point about it being very fictional science. They used the right scientific words to give a good cue to what’s going on without going into so much detail that you have to really put your suspension of disbelief to heavy duty work.
Given my interest in the premise of quantum physics the ending worked pretty well for me, though I figured it out quite a bit ahead of time. I knew what Jeffrey Wright’s character was missing almost immediately, but one of the things I noticed is that Wright’s character didn’t bother to actually ask the questions that would have led him to the same conclusion. So for me it was fairly predictable but not unpleasantly so.
It’s nice to see some smart sci-fi popping up here and there that doesn’t rely on loads of CGI to entertain the viewer. Source Code definitely fit that bill in my mind.
*CAUTION THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!*
*SERIOUSLY! SPIOLERS!*
*STOP READING UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN IT ALREADY!*
I love the film. I liked it a lot better then Moon. I liked the characters, the tension, the sci-finess of the whole thing. That being said, even though I liked what happened in the end, they just layed on WAY too much cheesiness. The whole thing with the comedian at the end was just dumb. I’m sorry, that was just plain dumb. There was no real climax to the film either, I thought I was seeing a sci-fi action film, and I was, until the last 15 minutes where there’s a character climax, but not anything exciting. It’s hard to not let that awful shot of everyone happy on the train override the rest of tilm. I didn’t have a problem with him living in the alt-universe, or him being dead, I didn’t have a problem with the txt he sent, I didn’t have a problem with them going to the art thing, I didn’t have a problem with any of that. It was just the cheesefiest on the train at the end, and how easily he saves the day the last time. It’s awful when less than 3 minutes of film can ruin the whole experience so much.
Good timing. I just got back from this. I enjoyed it. Having just watched Sucker Punch yesterday, I was more unsure of wether the ending would work out ‘happily’ or not.
Spoiler:
I thought the ending worked pretty well. A nice quantum mechanical twist.
One thing that occurred to me was to wonder what happened to the person whom Jake Gyllenhaal replaced or, at least the consciousness of that person. Everyone except him gets their happy ending.
The “but wait…’ after the film ended is two things, really, but first,
SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER
1) How did the Source Code project manage to “project” into that particular person’s head? They’re a little fuzzy about that. No, a lot fuzzy.
2) That leads to the real problem. Where did the “real” guy go in those universes where Colter replaces Fentriss? Morally, there’s no problem when the train blows up — he would have been dead already, so booting out his “soul” or whatever isn’t on anyone’s conscience. But in the ending, the train doesn’t blow up, but Colter’s mind is still in Fentriss’ body. Pretty happy ending for our injured helo pilot, pretty crappy one for a school teacher.
I enjoyed the movie more than I expected. I thought it was going to be yet another save the train/plane/boat/bus movie. But the ending leaves me thinking more about what got skimmed over than what was accomplished. What happened to the guy who lost his body to Jake’s character? Isn’t he going to fall flat on his face as he tries to take over that man’s life? There’s a whole other story there left unresolved, and not in a we’re-planning-a-sequel sort of way. I have to wonder if a scene or two tucked in the movie might have sorted it out in a way that wouldn’t have left me sticking on that ending.
@5: He’s in the waiting room, talking to Al? :-)
jmeltzer – Quantum Leap! (The zillions of homages thereto in the picture were deliberate, according to things Duncan Jones has said).
And now I read Scott Bakula is in the movie (!).
I loved the film, as did the friend I saw it with. I had gone in expecting to see a generic action film, but hoping that as it was from “That Moon Guy” it might be something special… and wow, was it. It had actual, real emotions! Not Russian Mobster Throws Children To Safety psueudoheartbrake (don’t watch 2012. Seriously. Even John Cusack running around in a nice suit couldn’t save that movie). Source Code didn’t skimp on the character development just to showcase some new CGI trick. *happy sigh*
*SPOILERS*
@@@@@ Kadere ”
“The whole thing with the comedian at the end was just dumb. I’m sorry, that was just plain dumb. There was no real climax to the film either, I thought I was seeing a sci-fi action film, and I was, until the last 15 minutes where there’s a character climax, but not anything exciting. It’s hard to not let that awful shot of everyone happy on the train override the rest of film”
Really? I loved that part of the film. I didn’t see it as cheesy at all. It was… happy. I was really impressed that they did something other than the classic Dangling Off The Roof Of The Speeding Train ending *yawn*. The film was about the characters, not the KABOOM. Oh well, YMMV, maybe you’d like 2012 :-D
I feel like there’s a way to continue a smart sci-fi action film about real emotions and characters, as this film starts as, and end it in a big third act that falls into the same rythum of the first two, rather then instead derailing the momentum of the film and turning it instead into “Groundhog’s Day On A Train.” If Duncan really wanted to remake “Groundhog’s Day” so bad, and make a romance film instead of a sci-fi action film, he should have made one and marketed it as such. As is the end of the film doesn’t match the the first two acts and what we get has no tension or drama and the character climaxes feel hammed out. I’ve never seen 2012, but at least Roland Emmrich gives his audience what they expect.
This is full of spoilers
Just do not read unless you have seen the movie.
Even then you may not want to read it .. :)
I wanted to like Source Code. I think part of why it did not work for me is that it was too nebulous about the title object, the source code. Where did they get it from? Was it really the last 8 minutes of someone’s life? If so then how did the imbeded character get off the train? The last 8 minutes would only be aware of what the deceased would have been aware of. If he did not get off the train at the first stop then the imbedded person would not have been able to leave the train.
If it is some alternate reality transport system then the question is how did that brigde come into being by accessing memories? To me it is a much less plausible possibility in the suspension of disbelief olympics.
It is like entering the diving competion and winning the gold for gymnastics.
The one thing I did not like was the forced romance. Sure it made a simple plot device that did not have to work to hard but it was unnecessary and considering the people visible on the train there were only two traveling couples and quite a few single or non romantically involved travelers. It was delightfully convenient that he just happened to be compatible with the one person on board who was in the beginning of a young relationship with a pretty girl.
It was moderate fiction in my mind with some Science Fiction overtones but I found it to be rather ordinary and the ending was not so much of a twist but a casual wish fulfilment that did not need to regard the preceding story much since the key information about the project was vauge enought to be anything the romance needed it to be instead of being the Science a science fiction story would need it to be.
Ha! My husband raised all these points and I just said ‘unask the question’. For that way lies dissatisfaction with a great film (for instance we just watched ?why? a film on terrestrial tv about rebel gymnasts). So let’s just be grateful for some intelligent Sci-Fi.