Source Code

Probably not too many years back the most interesting thing about Duncan Jones to the casual person on the street was that he was David Bowie’s son and that he had changed his name from ‘Zowie’. (Zowie Bowie - thanks, dad!) But then Jones turned up trumps with his directorial debut, the old-school, sci-fi, chin-stroker that was Moon and suddenly a major movie talent announced itself. I loved Moon and this follow-up, Source Code, boded well just from the pitch alone.

A man (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes on a train. The woman opposite him (Michelle Monaghan) speaks to him like she knows him, calling him another name. Confused, the man looks in a mirror and sees the reflection doesn’t match his own. Who is he now? How did he get there? Eight minutes after ‘waking up’, the train explodes.



The man, Colter Stevens, then awakes in a small, dark pod. A military pilot who served in Afghanistan, he is addressed by an officious woman on a monitor (Vera Farmiga) who informs him he is reliving the ‘source code’, the last 8 minutes of a person’s life, and he must go back to the train and, with those remaining minutes, discover who planted the bomb. He can’t save anyone. He can’t change the future. He can only investigate. And so back he goes – onto the train, facing the same woman, over and over, trying to piece together what happened there but also trying to understand who it is that keeps sending him back, what has happened to him to create this situation and also, maybe, just maybe, seeing if it's really true that he can't change things after all. . .

It’s Groundhog Day condensed into an 8 minute schedule, fused with Quantum Leap but with a 70s style sci-fi and thriller genre all thrown in to the mix.

It’s a great pitch, and allows the movie a double-pronged mystery. You get the plot onboard the train, with Stevens checking red herrings, harassing passengers and searching around as he tries to uncover the bomb plot. But there’s also the plot outside the train, with Stevens bewildered by his surroundings (where is he, exactly?) with those giving the orders clearly not letting him in on the full story. That Source Code takes this streamlined thriller plot and delves into notions of fate and free will, of life and death and what’s important in between, that it manages to fundamentally be a romance is all to its credit.



The movie’s pacing is buoyed by a script that wastes as little time as possible on exposition in pursuit of getting to the next scene. Again, this is a good thing, as too much mystery or pondering could have dragged the whole piece down. Instead Source Code retains its intelligent core ideas but maintains a crowdpleasing energy. Any scenes on board the train are always fixed on the fact that an explosion is never more than 8 minutes away, and time outside the ‘source code’ trickles clues and answers as Colter demands to understand more.



Jake Gyllenhaal is on fine form here. His Colter conveys bewilderment and frustration just as well as pragmatic capability. I really liked how his character adapted to his set of circumstances in a way that never lets you get bored. When he realises Christina (Monaghan, the woman opposite him in the train) has him confused with someone else he just states it outright, nipping it in the bud, and it’s this cutting to the chase attitude that works really well.

Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga both have limited screen time but you’ll figure they appear for longer than they do given how well they work with what they’re given. Monaghan is effortlessly likable and you can appreciate how Colter could fall for her so much, so fast. Farmiga, meanwhile, keeps the sterile veneer of her character Goodwin just over a quivering morality that can’t allow protocol to over-ride decency.

So long as you allow yourself to give in to the really big ideas and concepts that are eventually revealed this is a tightly-logical yet thoughtful film. Where some movies might have been tempted to go for a more oblique, ambiguous ending (there’s a brief moment where I thought Source Code was going to close out in such a way and it wouldn’t have actually been bad but, you know, I much prefer definition to ambiguity any day!) Source Code pretty much wraps things up whilst also leaving you stuff to mull over.



Following Moon with this, then, Duncan Jones has really made a good impression on me. Clearly a man in-tune and respective to ‘proper’ science-fiction, as a medium of saying something important by way of the currently impossible, he’s managed the tricky transition from cult low-budget to mainstream bigger budget. The numerous explosives and wonderful sweeping second unit shots may show a step up in production values but the ‘small’ movie, cult mindset is still present. Long may he retain his own style within the Hollywood machine no doubt desperate to suck him in.

Source Code might not be a movie you need to re-visit and re-watch over and over the way Colter needs to keep reliving that fateful train journey, but it does, at the very least, need to be seen once.