Source Code
“Source Code” is the film that proves that Duncan Jones, who previously directed the instant classic, “Moon,” with Sam Rockwell, is more than a one-hit wonder. This is the second film I’ve seen in roughly a month that uses a sci-fi or metaphysical premise to tell a personal story of destiny and fate. The first was “The Adjustment Bureau,” and as exciting as that film was, “Source Code” is better. Like the earlier film, “Source Code” adapts the archetypes of a Hitchcock suspense thriller into an intriguing story of free will and second chances that engages the audience as much as it challenges us to go along with it.
Jake Gyllenhaal is a thinking man’s hero as Captain Colter Stevens, a young military pilot who wakes up on a train. He is disoriented, uncertain of his surroundings, and he doesn’t understand what has happened and why the woman across from him (Michelle Monaghan) is calling him Sean. Part of the immediate suspense of Ben Ripley’s screenplay is how he manages to put the audience in the same disoriented state as Stevens in this opening. After eight minutes, the train explodes. After the explosion, Stevens finds himself in a simulator talking to a military woman named Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who informs him of his task: he is part of a military experiment called Source Code, which allows someone to enter the body of another person for eight minutes. Stevens’s goal is to find the terrorist who planted the bomb before the eight minutes is up.
Why eight minutes? The program’s brilliant creator, Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), has a typically convoluted sci-fi explanation for it that borders on the ridiculous, and indeed, “Source Code” is grounded more in “sci-fi logic” than in actual scientific theory. This type of thing works great in the movies, but in the real world such experimentation would inspire troubling ethical questions, especially if it were possible to actually change the course of history. Stevens wonders if he can, as each time in the source code brings him closer to Christina (Monaghan’s character), but as Rutledge says, “This isn’t time travel. This is time reassignment.” The love story is less pronounced than in “Adjustment Bureau” but no less affecting, as Stevens thinks he can save the people on the train in addition to the people who might die later if he can’t find the bomber. This is the sort of leading man role Gyllenhaal has so far been unable to find in a mainstream film (if you think “The Day After Tomorrow” was a strong lead role, allow me to say, just, no), and he really digs into this role with force and feeling as Stevens’s circumstances get more difficult to handle. Monaghan (from “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and “Mission: Impossible III”) is, as well, a warm and engaging foil for him in their interactions together on the train.
In many ways, “Source Code” is dealing with familiar material for genre fans (think most of the films based on Phillip K. Dick stories), but Jones, the son of rock icon David Bowie, has that uncanny ability, like Hitchcock and Spielberg, to make the familiar fresh by playing true to the material, populating the film with great actors (kudos also to Farmiga for her superb performance), and not talking down to the audience. Well, maybe that last one hasn’t always been true with either Hitch or Spielberg, but Jones unquestionably has the skill set to forge a career and body of work to rival those masters. Jones already has two unqualified successes to his name (if you haven’t seen “Moon” yet, check it out asap). That’s a pretty good head-start.
