‘Inception’ meets ‘Groundhog Day’ in ‘Source Code’

By John Soltes

For a film that feels like it’s ripping off the recent dream-thriller movies of the past few years, Source Code is actually quite original.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier who is unknowingly used by the military to try and prevent a terrorist attack in Chicago. Correction: To try and prevent another terrorist attack in Chicago.

When the movie opens, a commuter train has already blown up on the outskirts of the Windy City, killing most, if not all, of its passengers. The person responsible for the bomb now has his sights set on Chicago’s downtown area, and the authorities have only a few precious hours to thwart his efforts.

Enter Colter Stevens, who died two months before during a battle in Afghanistan, and now must enter the brain of an unknown passenger on the train. Source Code’s conceit is that a person’s brain is able to still transmit signals for eight minutes after death, and so the military uses Stevens’s post-mortem brain power to have him go back in time and find the bomber on the train.

Sounds confusing, but writer Ben Ripley and director Duncan Jones make the proceedings very easy to understand. Essentially Gyllenhaal’s character is stuck in a metaphysical pod, where he sees a satellite image of Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga of The Departed), a fellow soldier who steps him through the process of the train bombing.

After the flip of a switch, he is constantly sent back to the train to relive the final eight minutes. Each time he enters this alternate reality, he needs to rush through the train and pick up on clues. After eight minutes, it explodes.

Source Code immediately brings to mind Groundhog Day, another movie about a man cursed to living an interval of time over and over again (although that one was a comedy). But today’s audiences are probably more liable to see parallels with Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio or even Denzel Washington’s recent runaway-train thriller, Unstoppable.

No matter the inspiration, Source Code feels original. The idea is a neat one, and lends itself to thrilling moments.

Where it trips up a bit is in the science part. Jeffrey Wright, of Shaft and Angels in America, plays the scientist who developed Source Code for the military.

In his explanations of the technology, the movie begins to fall apart. Why eight minutes? Why Colter Stevens? How did they plug into this unknown man on the train? Why anything?

It would have been better if the intricacies of the plot remained off-screen. Just let Gyllenhaal “save the world” as he says in the film to Michelle Monaghan’s Christina Warren, a woman on the train whom he grows to love.

But Source Code is a solid film, and probably one of the strongest of 2011 so far. Just enjoy it, and leave the thinking to better films like Inception.

Source Code

2011

Directed by Duncan Jones

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga

Running time: 93 minutes

Bubble score: 3 out of 4