I heard a lot of film writers describe Duncan Jones’ debut Moon as being “hard science fiction”. What that means, from what I remember of my literature classes, is that it is a subset of science fiction that focuses more in depth on the technical aspects of its science. The future technology in the story is less a magical, unexplained MacGuffin, and more a speculative look at where modern research will take current gadgetry. I don’t think that Moon could accurately be described as being hard science fiction, but I think what those writers were getting at is that it focused more on its ideas and what impact future tech would have on humanity philosophically, and less on explosions and robot battles. There is an intellectual slant to Moon that is largely lacking in recent science fiction films, and I found it to be a hugely refreshing change of pace. That’s why I was disappointed when I started seeing the advertisements for Jones’ second film, Source Code, and it looked like less of a think piece, and more of a remake of Speed that added the sci-fi conceit of jumping into other people’s bodies. I was worried that the studio system had gotten its claws into Duncan Jones and forced him to make something stupid and commercial. I went in to Source Code hoping that it would go deeper into the realm of idea than the trailers indicated, and wouldn’t just be a shallow action film about Jake Gyllenhaal trying to defuse a bomb on a train. What I got was sort of the opposite. Source Code is a film that is very concerned with science fiction ideas, but that also pays a criminally small amount of attention to its action thrills.
Source Code throws us right into its story with disorienting effect. Jake Gyllenhaal’s character wakes up on a commuter train to Chicago and doesn’t seem to know where he is. He thinks that he is a helicopter pilot named Colter Stevens, stationed in Afghanistan; but clearly this train is in the United States, and the woman sitting across from him keeps calling him Sean. Eight confusing minutes later the train explodes and Gyllenhaal wakes up again, this time in a metallic capsule devoid of anything other than a seat he is strapped into and a screen that he converses with a woman through. The woman is a government employee named Colleen Goodwin. She explains to him that he is a soldier in the top-secret source code project, one that allows a person to relive the last 8 minutes of a dead person’s life. It’s explained like the delayed glow that sticks around after you turn off a light bulb. There are electric pathways in the brain that can still be accessed after death, but only for the last eight minutes. Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense, but it’s the big fictional conceit of the film, so just go with it. Stevens’ mission is to relive the last eight minutes of Sean Fentress’ life over and over until he can figure out who bombed the commuter train and why. It seems that the train exploding is just the beginning; the terrorist has threatened to follow up by detonating a dirty bomb in downtown Chicago. Stevens’ body jumping detective work may be the only way that the government can figure out who is making the threats, and preemptively save the lives of millions.
Other than the unique plot, Source Code’s biggest strength is in its acting. I’ve been pretty annoyed by Jake Gyllenhaal in everything he has done until this. I’m not saying that I haven’t liked him in things, I liked his performances in things like The Good Girl and Donnie Darko, but he’s always had a dopey faced man-child thing going on that really annoyed me. Here he not only gives a good performance, but he also stands tall as a believable adult male human being. This is leagues above the macho, action hero posturing of Prince of Persia, where he seemed to be doing an exaggerated, reverse drag queen mimicry of masculinity. Here he feels like a regular guy, somebody whose shoes you could put yourself in. One of my biggest concerns about this film was how I was going to react to Gyllenhaal, and in every respect I was pleasantly surprised. Michelle Monaghan plays the love interest, the girl sitting across from Stevens every time he wakes up on the train, and she doesn’t really get much more to do than act as a prop for Gyllenhaal to play off of. It’s a lot of saying the same dialogue over and over again, with slight variations depending on how Stevens chooses to deal with this go around in the source code. Monaghan is sweet and charming though, and she has that girl next door vibe going on that instantly lets you know you’re supposed to be sympathizing with and rooting for her. Watching her character die over and over again is pretty traumatic, both for Stevens and for you as a viewer, and her continual torment adds a huge amount of urgency to the plot. Every time you watch her be painfully engulfed in flame you wish harder for Stevens to find a way to end the cycle. Vera Farmiga plays Goodwin, the military woman on the screen, and she gets more of a character arc comparatively. While Monaghan’s character is stuck in the same loop over and over, Farmiga’s is changed over the course of the film’s happenings. She starts off as a by-the-book career soldier, but by the end of the film she is presented with a crisis point and a big decision that calls everything we’ve come to think of her into question. When that moment comes, and she has to make a decision that will define who she is as a human being, I bought the journey taken and Farmiga’s performance enough to make the resolution believable. The other big character in the film is Dr. Rutledge, the scientist who has created the source code. He is played by Jeffrey Wright, and although he is a complex figure, Wright’s portrayal is able to very effectively portray him as the film’s villain. Despite the fact that Rutledge never does anything that is unquestionably evil, or out of the realm of what we may have chose to do ourselves if put in the same position, Wright plays his character with such a thoughtless, bull headed stubbornness that I heard people in my theater getting audibly angry every time he would show up on screen. That’s the sign of a good villain, and the reaction comes almost exclusively from Wright’s choices as a performer.
The film’s script has its flaws, but is, I would say, better than average. The fact that it was written by Ben Ripley, who up to this point has done not much other than straight to video Species sequels, comes as a bit of a surprise. This has to be seen as a huge upgrade for Ripley’s career, and a glimpse at what he actually has to offer as a screenwriter. Though the mystery of the bomb on the train lends Source Code much of its sizzle, it is the greater mystery of where Colter Stevens is and exactly what he is going through that is the true heart of the film. As he is trying to suss out the predicament of who it is that bombed this train, Stevens is simultaneously trying to figure out what happened to him in Afghanistan, how exactly he ended up in this source code program, and why he has no memory of the past few months. If this movie had been entirely about what happened on the train, it would have been far less interesting than what we really got. The deeper mystery of the source code allows the film to be enjoyed on multiple levels. It works as a surface level thriller, as a more ambiguous example of progressive science fiction, and it even has a bit of Groundhog Day inspired déjà vu humor.
That’s not to say that the script is a complete success, however. The story, while generally interesting and original, did stumble over its own conceits at several points. Multiple times during Stevens’ eight-minute journeys into the world of the exploding train he finds himself off of the train and avoiding death by explosion. When this happens the script finds ham-handed excuses to make sure that he dies at the eight-minute point anyways. Couldn’t they have just had the simulation dissolve away and start over whether he died or not? The too coincidental to be plausible deaths by not-explosion really took me out of the film and made it seem like the filmmakers were over thinking things. And in addition to this, I felt like the credibility of the sci-fi world they established got hugely compromised in the third act. For most of its runtime Source Code does a good job of establishing its own universe and its own pseudo-science. The scientific possibilities of accessing the last eight minutes of someone’s life in some sort of virtual world aren’t exactly believable, but the script at least makes it clear what is and what isn’t possible once you’ve entered the source code. And then, just once, they make a huge leap as to what you will accept is possible even in this universe. How you respond to this leap will probably dictate how you feel about this movie when you walk out of it. I found it to reek a bit too much of studio notes demanding that things end happily, but it was presented ambiguously enough, and in a way that raised enough philosophical questions about recreations vs. reality, that I ended up allowing myself to go with it. Some people will disagree. But if the biggest complaint about this film is that it went too deeply into the logistics of its sci-fi world, then I consider that to be a pleasant surprise. I was worried that it would just be shallow.
