Source Code

Rating : 6/10
Release Date : April, 2011
Time : 93 minutes
Director : Duncan Jones; Writer : Ben Ripley; Music : Rick Smith
Starring : Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Arden, Russell Peters

Jake, a US bomber pilot, who last remembers being on a mission in Afghanistan, wakes up in the body of another man, sitting across a lovely woman (Michelle) on a suburban train to Chicago. Which explodes a few minutes later. And he finds he isn’t dead…and has to find the bomber, who, authorities suspect, is about to plant a deadlier device in another location….

A considerable amount of sci-fi mumbo jumbo tries to explain how this is happening, what are the time constraints, what are the rules (you cant really change anything – ie if Jake made Michelle get off from the train, she wouldn’t live) and then through some equally hazy hocus-pocus, we find the rules are a bit bendable…

Vera Farmiga presents the humane face of the authorities while Jeffrey Wright represents the types who want to lie, make false promises and use others in their single-minded quest to succeed, reach the top of yet another secret US military organization…

The tension, the pace of the film and the events unfolding do keep you riveted…though there is a sentimental thread in the middle that does detract from the rest of the events. Jake is quite good as a person who’s bewildered, trying to figure out whats happening to him and those around him, while Michelle is excellent as the bubbly commuter, struggling with a personal decision. Vera is impressive, as always and Jeffrey does justice to his uni-dimensional character…the cameo by Russell Peters is good fun…

Source Code is a film that isn’t easy to understand and not entirely believable…you could at a pinch, imagine space travel in the distant future, or even Matrix-esque human cloning but something like the stuff that happens here seems very far-fetched…and that is the movie’s biggest flaw…