Source Code opens like some weird form of charades: it’s Jake Gyllenhaal … he’s on a train … he’s opposite Michelle Monahan … does he know her?… do they have a relationship?… hey, is this a kissing movie? … he’s surprised … no, restless … no, confused … um, he’s hungry! …. No, he wants to see somebody … no, he’s looking for something … uh oh, time’s up. *Explosion* Then a new game of charades: it’s Jake Gyllenhaal … he’s in a big box … it’s cold … he’s in the army … this is training of some kind … no, this is a mission … or is it?
The point to all this is there’s military high tech stuff going on and it deals with memory, so Jake has lost his. Imagine a machine so complicated that it can recreate memories down to the finest detail, so much so that someone can enter the memory and play around in it. Did I mention that the machine can do this by taking memories of people who just died? Ok, now imagine this machine can not only recreate the scene, but alter variables so that someone entering into the memory can actually manipulate the situation to learn more than the original memory caster had taken into account.
Is this possible? Oh, not in the slightest. The science here is about as plausible as creationism. But hey, it’s a premise. And a good one. Naturally, all sci-fi premises come with parameters. This one holds that GI Jake has eight (8) minutes to learn what he can until the train blows up. (He has to figure out who blew up the train, duh.) Otherwise, it’s start again time. And the running clock here plays out in a secondary area – intelligence has the train bomber attacking a bigger target in the near future, i.e. there are only so many chances Jake has to figure out what’s going on.
And, of course, one might ask, “if the computer create recreate scenarios with such a fine attention to detail, why can’t it figure out who blew up the train?” Now I’m just being silly. “look, you got your premise, you got your Jake Gyllenhaal, you got your weird triple-layered reality, stop questioning and move on. This film is far easier to piece together than Inception. Geez.”
The ride is fun. Figuring out Jake Gyllenhaal’s reality is also worth the effort.
Rated PG-13, 93 Minutes
D: Duncan Jones
W: Ben Ripley
Genre: Groundhog Day, except with guns and explosions and stuff
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Alternative universe geeks
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Alzheimer’s sufferers
