Source Code

He's already been to the Moon, but director Duncan Jones isn't done with the sci-fi genre yet. His feet are firmly planted on terrestrial soil for his sophomore effort, the partially satisfying thriller Source Code, and he's exhibiting much of the same impressive abilities he first displayed in his 2009 debut Moon, which was practically a one-man show with Sam Rockwell doing the heavy lifting. Once again, he has cast a talented actor (Jake Gyllenhaal this time around) in a leading role that dominates the narrative. He has provided the movie with a sharp and flavourful visual style and has confidently crafted a very solid hour or so of cinematic sci-fi fun. But that still leaves approximately one third of narrative space where the movie is free to ultimately underwhelm on its way to a tidy conclusion.

As with Moon, Source Code suffers from promising so much in its early moments and then failing to fully capitalize on its established potential. Neither movie is particularly memorable or moving in the end, but their initial journeys remain entertaining achievements. Source Code uses a nifty concept of a human afterglow (a period of approximately eight minutes where the electromagnetic field that surrounds the human brain remains briefly detectable as it slowly fades from existence) to tell the story of how Captain Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) attempts to solve a mystery and prevent a series of terrorist attacks from killing millions of Chicago citizens.

Colter isn't much more than a pawn in an experiment being run by the U.S. military and so he's a bit fuzzy on the details at first, which works well when it comes to filling us in on what is actually happening. It turns out that Colter is having his consciousness be transferred into the body of a man who is eight minutes away from being killed in a gargantuan explosion aboard a commuter train. Colter is still Colter in his head, but he only looks like himself to us and he enters this doomed body in the midst of a conversation with inevitable love interest Christina (Michelle Monaghan). It's all a bit disorienting at first, but Colter soon learns that his mission is to locate both the bomb and the bomber and make sure that the terrorist doesn't get the chance to detonate any more bombs after this one.

So the interesting twist is that Colter's mission is not to stop this particular train from blowing up, but rather to prevent the future explosions that exist outside of the eight minute window that Colter has to work within. It's a neat idea and it leads to a lot of enjoyable onscreen repetition, because every time Colter comes up empty handed at the eight minute mark, he explodes, wakes up in a dingy chamber where he can communicate with military personnel through a small monitor, and is forced to go through the whole experience again. With each new opportunity to solve the mystery, Colter begins handling each imminent occurrence in new and unexpected ways.

Gyllenhaal has a lot of fun with the role in these moments of self-discovery, as his character begins to grasp the immediacy of the situation and the fact that he can go to any lengths necessary to complete his mission. Suddenly, he's correctly predicting even the smallest event (a woman who repeatedly spills coffee on his shoe, for one) and he isn't afraid to rough up some of the passengers in his attempt to unmask the would-be killer. Gyllenhaal puts his effortless charm to good use here and the likable Monaghan makes for a good partner, so together they make Source Code's dramatic stakes actually count for something.

During these mysterious moments where Colter keeps reliving the same handful of seemingly minor events, the movie really barrels along with exciting intensity. Jones is in solid form during this portion of the narrative and he finds novel ways to explore the repetition so that we feel the familiarity without ever being bored by it. The editing is very sharp and Ben Ripley's script lets some humour slip into the repeated scenes, which nicely counters the looming danger that threatens both innocent lives and the success of Colter's mission.

The initial setup is quite smart, because by putting both the protagonist and us audience members in the same perplexing spot (on the train with no answers at first) makes it easy for us to connect to Colter and be invested in his plight. As he collects answers with each step forward, so do we, which means our mental connection to the plot is developed in unison with Gyllenhaal's character. It's one of the movie's strongest assets that it is able to define tension as clearly as it defines the hero of the story. Colter's mission is an interesting one and watching him piece together the slightly varying threads of information makes for a fun ride.

But after a while, it's time to solve the mystery and the fun is traded in for a resolution that is almost obvious and far too simple. With still plenty of time left on the movie's own clock, Source Code switches gears and tosses away the crackling pace and jittery tone in favour of romance and smiles. It's not an inherently awful plan on the surface, but the movie doesn't earn the switch in identity and genre, which serves to sentimentalize the entire narrative. Suddenly, Colter's journey is nearing its destination and Source Code is transforming into something generic and dramatically gooey. Gyllenhaal and Monaghan don't share enough chemistry to make the romance work and attempts by Jones (and even composer Chris Bacon, who begins by sort of channelling Bernard Herrmann and then ends up settling for sappy and unoriginal notes) to locate a happy, convenient ending are forced and frustrating.

Despite its seemingly convoluted conceit, Source Code really isn't very complicated at all. Sure, the mad scientist caricature (played by the talented Jeffrey Wright, though you wouldn't know it based on this performance) who invented the titular technology that makes the plot possible likes to mention parabolic calculus and quantum physics in his explanations, but the movie is actually very accessible and rather easy to follow. This isn't necessarily a flaw, although it would have been fun to see the plot adopt additional complexities. But what remains an issue for me is that after Source Code has exhausted its standard bomb-on-the-train conflict, it takes such a predictable and uninspired path towards its conclusion. It suddenly treats the sci-fi concept as a means to an end and even though that end is character-focused, it still leaves a whole host of more interesting possibilities in its wake.

Duncan Jones has made another sci-fi movie that operates with a brain in the first two acts and then a heart in the third and final one. Hearts are obviously good things to have and employ, but this feels like an awkward and counterproductive approach to me, considering Jones nails the clinical surface of a sci-fi concept and yet seems lost and unimaginative when it comes to tangible human emotion. But even then, Source Code is a science fiction movie with big ideas and that it doesn't fully realize them doesn't mean it isn't successful to a considerable degree. I'll still happily take two-thirds of a solid sci-fi movie over zero-thirds (now that's some simple math!), but I hope that I can eventually praise all of a Duncan Jones movie and not just a hearty portion of it. With its mostly good cast (the eminently watchable Vera Farmiga turns in a fine performance as Colter's military contact and she balances out the ridiculously showy cheese that Wright is spewing), impressive visual design, and intriguing concept, Source Code has a lot to offer and is quite likable, even if a simple math equation tells me that two-thirds don't make a whole.