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Source Code
| Released |
1 April 2011 |
| Director |
Duncan Jones |
Starring
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Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright |
| Writer(s) |
Ben Ripley |
Producer(s)
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Mark Gordon, Philippe Rousselet, Jordan Wynn |
| Origin |
United States, France |
| Running Time |
93 minutes |
| Genre |
Sci-fi, thriller |
| Rating |
12A |
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Dangers on a train.
Source Code opens with soaring aerial shots of a modern commuter train thundering through the countryside towards the city of Chicago. With all these beautifully rendered shots of wide open countryside and towering skyscrapers, my initial thought was that director Duncan Jones had taken a huge leap from his acclaimed and deeply claustrophobic debut, Moon. As we are thrown into the story though, it becomes clear that despite the earthly setting and inflated budget, Source Code has much more in common with his debut feature than you would think- they share the same spirit by transplanting a very classic type of storytelling into a very modern type of setting. If Moon was an outer space ghost story, then Source Code would best be described as a time-travelling whodunnit. Murder on the Orient Express retold for the high-tech generation.
More striking is the fact that the intense loneliness and claustrophobia of that first film has also been carried through for a new protagonist, Cpt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal). An unwilling participant in a secret military mission, Stevens must travel back in time to a commuter train that had exploded earlier that day. Inhabiting the body of a man that was on the train (a la Quantum Leap), Stevens has a period of eight minutes at a time to discover who planted the bomb so that a second attack can be stopped. The film alternates between replays of those eight minutes and Stevens’ real location in a darkened capsule. Although the trips to the train give some respite, Stevens is always trapped- both in those eight minutes of time and in the darkened capsule. For an action blockbuster with a stellar cast, this makes an intriguingly dark backdrop to all the running and jumping.
Gyllenhaall is an engaging presence throughout, as he tends to be when he has some good material to sink his teeth into. As the love interest, Michelle Monaghan is really no more than a cypher for Stevens’ moral journey through the film but she makes the role her own. On the military side of things, Vera Farmiga is great as the conflicted Goodwin and balances out Jeffrey Wright’s scenery chewing performance as Dr. Rutledge- it’s odd but somehow it works.
Source Code is a clever little puzzle of a film, with a gratifyingly old-fashioned style of storytelling despite its high-tech concept. I can’t help but think if Rod Serling were still around today, this would be the kind of story he would come up with for a twenty first century Twilight Zone. Duncan Jones remains one to watch.
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Linda O’Brien |
