Directed by Duncan Jones .
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright and Russell Peters.
SYNOPSIS:
A solider must relive a train bombing over and over to uncover the man responsible for the crime.
Sisyphus was a very deceitful Greek king who let his ego grow fat and self-important. He wasn’t a nice chap and the Gods ended up assigning him one of those horrible afterlife chores. For eternity he was to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to tumble down just before he reached the top. It ain’t no ‘guts-pecked-out-by-vultures’, but such repetition would grate pretty bad. Infinity is aaaaages.
In other news, hardly anyone likes commutes. They’re early and crammed.
Source Code is a sort of Sisyphusian commute and Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is thrown into its deep end. He awakes on a train with his head supported by its window. He has no idea how he got there and recognises none of the carriage’s passengers. The last thing he remembers was flying a helicopter in Afghanistan. “I’m Captain Colter Stevens,” he pleads with the woman sitting opposite him, who was talking to him like they were friends. “No you’re not. You’re Sean Fentress.” WTF, indeed.
Panicked, he stumbles around the train asking others where he is. You see this from both perspectives. You understand Stevens because you don’t know what’s going on either, but you also sympathise with his fellow commuters’ frustration - who hasn’t experienced a crazy guy on their way into work? He retreats to a toilet and notices the mirror. That isn’t his face. Checking the photo ID in his wallet, that’s Sean Fentress.
Understandably flustered, Stevens staggers out the toilet like a confused drunk. The woman who sat opposite him earlier is waiting for him. She’s Christina (Michelle Monaghan). “It’s all going to be ok,” she assures him. Then the train explodes. Stevens awakes in a dark capsule with frayed cables and wires snaking from its walls. They’re loose ends. A woman, ‘Goodwin’ (Vera Farmiga), appears on a monitor. It has a late-90s, Dystopian metallic grey finish. This screen is Stevens’ only connection with the real, outside world.
Earlier that morning, the train Stevens was on had exploded on its way to Chicago. It was a terrorist attack, and more are threatened to come. Stevens’ mission is to relive the last 8 minutes on that train as Sean Fentress so he can find the bomber and prevent any more explosions. But how, you might ask. It isn’t through time travel, it’s through parallel realities and quantum theory and stuff. Sean Fentress died on that train, but Stevens is able to experience his last 8 minutes by tapping into the dying man’s final brain signature. Just imagine it’s like a really intense Groundhog Day. With alternate realities.
Contrived? Maybe, but so was Inception. In ways it’s better, favouring ‘Sci-Fi’ over ‘Action Film’. There’s a 70s political conspiracy edge to it all too, like a more tripped out Parallax View. The score throws in the odd brass section, much like The Incredibles’ take on the same era’s film music, for good measure.
You would think that Source Code has enough plot already, but each 8 minute commute reveals some new, compounded twist. The film untwines in two time lines – Stevens trying to identify the train’s bomber and Stevens trying to find out where he is in that capsule. When did he ever sign up for this timey travelly programme anyways? Last thing he remembers before the train was Afghanistan.
Source Code shares themes with Duncan Jones’ previous film, Moon. Both Sci-Fi, of course, but they also ask questions over the protagonist’s identity, increasingly confusing reality and existence. More interestingly, both Stevens and Moon’s Sam Bell are isolated, one in some unknown capsule, the other on a remote lunar base. Their only communication with characters other than themselves is mediated through screens. Their interaction with reality is second hand, and thus its reliability is cast it in doubt.
SPOILER: If you’ve seen Source Code, revisit Metallica’s video for ‘One’. It’s edited with clips of Johnny Got His Gun, a film about a soldier who was hit by an artillery shell on the last day of the Great War. He lost all four limbs and his eyes, ears, mouth and nose in the impact, but is kept alive by in a military hospital. A prisoner in his own body. Captain Colter Stevens channels this soldier and gives him the release Johnny Got His Gun denied.
And another thing, by the film’s own logic, a parallel reality splintered off from each trip into the source code. Stevens harassed a lot of people in their final 8 minutes in that reality. That’s a lot of crappy commutes.
Oli Davis
365 Days, 100 Films
Movie Review Archive
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