Source Code

Released by: Optimum Home Entertainment
Availability: Out Now
Price: £19.99

Time is a funny thing and cinema thrillers have played around with it since science-fiction became a firm staple in the annual line-up. Frankly you no longer need a Tardis to make that wobbly-wobbly, timey-whimey action interesting. Then again, we are getting to the point where such movies are often variations on a theme - it’s not the notion that’s new, more the attempt at execution.

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a train, talking to an attractive woman (Michelle Monaghan) who seems to know him - or rather seems to know somebody who she thinks he is. But he isn’t. Or is he? Like the audience he’s naturally very confused - his last memory being of severe trials and tribulations in Afghanistan. Then there’s an explosion and he and everyone in the train carriage dies in the blast. Or do they? Colter finds himself in an enclosed space, a claustrophobic pod/flight-deck with a female voice asking for his status. It turns out that somehow his consciousness is being projected into another body in a parallel reality… that of a passenger on a train that was blown up earlier that day. The event has already happened - that can’t be changed, but he must repeat the process until he can find out where the bomb was placed and who placed it there - so a subsequent bomb can be stopped. Seconds later, he’s back at the same moment his previous ’leap’ began. Time to try again…

Essentially, Source Code is what could neatly be described as Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day - a Twilight Zone episode stretched to feature-length format. It’s an enjoyable story, as we share Colter’s attempts to first make sense of his predicament and then start asking the questions / taking the initiatives that we might ourselves, if we found ourselves in such a strange situation. Like Groundhog Day, the ‘improvements’ are gradual, clues being brought together from various attempts, decisions changing consequences, but somehow never enough.

Such stories sometimes flounder in their denouement, the third act climax not living up to the concept of the full project, a high concept stumbling to the low floor. Your mileage may vary on the pay-off at the end of Source Code, depending on how you want or expect things to be resolved, but the over-all journey is a fun-enough outing that you don’t feel cheated before the credits roll.

Gyllenhaal acquits himself well, demonstrating the right amounts of bewilderment and pathos, Monaghan is also good, making the most of a situation/role where she’s reset to have less than ten slightly different minutes of screen-time over and over again.

This is director Duncan Jones’ second movie - the first being the cult-hit Moon and Source Code is distinctly more mainstream. However it’s a solid adventure with enough mystery, action, tension and angst to suit most discerning audiences and should have as much success on DVD as it did on its cinema debut.

8/10

John Mosby - Editor

Born at a early age, creative writing and artwork seemed to be in John’s blood from the start Even before leaving school he was a runner up in the classic Jackanory Writing Competition and began...

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