Source Code (Review)

At its best, the genre of science fiction can be used to ask – and possibly answer – grand existential questions about humanity. With 2009’s Moon, filmmaker Duncan Jones proved that he was more than capable of handling such ambitious material. Source Code, his second effort, is his first foray into more mainstream Hollywood fare. As a director, he handles the material quite well. The problem is that the material itself is indecisive. Source Code is often exciting and always engaging, but it ends on a note that makes the whole film seem silly in retrospect.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Captain Colter Stevens, who wakes up on a train and has no idea where he is. After eight minutes of confusion, the train explodes. It is then he wakes up in a dark chamber with only a small television screen which allows him to communicate with the outside world. Through this screen is Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who alerts him that the train he was on exploded this morning outside Chicago. He has been sent into the body of one of the passengers so that he may re-live the last eight minutes of the subject’s life. It is his job to find who set the bomb that blew up the train. While on the train, he spends his time with Christina, a nice woman played by Michelle Monaghan.

It’s best I stop there, because after a while the plot twists come early and often. Is Colter Stevens who he thinks he is? Can preventing disaster in the source code mean preventing disaster in real life? And who did bomb the train? All of these questions have answers, and while some are satisfying, others are either inconsistent or less than fulfilling. Source Code is so intent on answering every possible question that it answers some of them multiple times. When the movie’s over, it has directly contradicted its own rules a few too many times to ignore. At least Inception seemed like it wasn’t making things up as it went along. Source Code thinks it can do whatever it wants, particularly in the third act.

Source Code begins promisingly, and stays that way for a while. It’s best at its most disorienting – when we’re trying to piece together the puzzle right along with Gyllenhaal. As the film goes on, the picture comes into focus… then it becomes so clear you just want it to shut up and leave something to the imagination. It’s hard to believe the final sequences came from the same creative minds as the first half. Much like last month’s The Adjustment Bureau, Source Code spends most of its time creating an interesting and exciting world, but then it undoes it all with a lazy resolution that reflects badly on everything that came before.

This film was written by Ben Ripley, whose past work includes such illustrious fare as Species III and Species: The Awakening. All joking aside, there’s some great writing in Source Code, and you almost wonder if his vision was de-railed by a bunch of Hollywood executives who put a gun to his head and demanded the most palatable conclusion. It’s a shame that these days you need to make The Dark Knight in order to get full creative control over a project that shows any ambition at all. If Source Code stuck to its guns, we really could have had something.

None of the characters here are all that developed beyond the usual archetypes. Gyllenhaal is best as a soldier who spends his time juggling between searching for a bomb as well as his own identity. Farmiga is fine as a seemingly hard-edged Captain who eventually becomes the sympathetic woman, and Jeffrey Wright plays the soulless creator of the source code technology. Meanwhile, Monaghan mostly sits there and falls in love with Gyllenhaal, albeit convincingly enough. No one here is spectacular, but none of them screw it up either.

Source Code is absolutely bonkers, and that would have been fine if only it committed itself to its own insanity. It’s okay for movie science to be made up as long as it rings true within the world that is created. Source Code does not achieve this. It reveals itself to have absolutely no logic whatsoever. It pushes the envelope, but only as much as it’s convenient.

Rating:  (out of 4)