There’s the general consensus that Chesney Hawkes loving director, Duncan Jones, has been on a downward spiral since his feature debut, Moon, obliterated us in the feels as it told the tragic/inspiring story of a lonely technician stationed on the titular satellite. After taking in such missed opportunities as the orc-laden Warcraft and the sight of Paul Rudd with a handlebar moustache in Mute, it’s an admittedly hard fact to dispute, however, evening out the balance and adding some deserved credit back to Jones name, was Source Code, his breezy, sci-fi thriller from 2011 that followed his debut with style.
Not only was the film extraordinarily likable and managed to deal with reality warping, Christopher Nolan-style shit with a refreshing lack of pomposity, it also showed that there’s still life in the old Groundhog Day scenario of a main character having to relive a certain amount of time over and over until something clicks.
Army pilot Captain Colter Stevens awakes to find himself sitting on a Metra commuter train heading into Chicago, nothing peculiar about that, but the plot thickness while still in its infancy when we realise that Stevens has no memory of getting on the train or even who the young woman talking to him like their old friends is. The last thing Stevens remembers was flying a mission in Afghanistan and so he’s understandably disorientated at his unexpected surroundings, but the good news is that he won’t be befuddled for long, because the bad news is that the bomb hidden on the train explodes, decimating the train and thereby annihilating his confusion.
Or so you’d think, because Stevens subsequently wake up again in a gloomy, cramped, cockpit-style structure and thanks to a grainy video screen, is appraised of his strange predicament by Air Force Captain Colleen Goodwin. It seems that the hapless pilot is due to be directly placed back in the same scenario as before and only has an eight minute window to track down the bomb and figure out the identity of the bomber in order to find out where a second, far more destructive, dirty bomb is located. Stevens initially assumes that he’s now in some sort of simulation exercise, but it turns out that in reality, things couldn’t be more different. What is actually happening is that due to some sort of manipulation of time distortion, Stevens has been placed in the body of teacher named Sean Fentress and the train explosion has already happened, but due to some science-y stuff created by the sketchy Dr. Rutledge, he is placed in an ever repeating scenario within the “source code” where he’s apparently powerless to stop Sean, Sean’s friend Christina and everyone on the train dying a fiery death.
However, crazy science isn’t exactly an exact science and Stevens, with the help of Christina and a empathetic Goodwin, strives to try and things, even though they’ve already happened. Simple, really.
For a movie obsessed about focusing its efforts on a single eight minutes that occured in the past, Duncan Jones’ Source Code weirdly managed to predict the future with it’s time shifting malarkey. You see, while most movies that tackle the Groundhog Day theme with a sci-fi twist (see also Edge Of Tomorrow) focus on the time looping nature aspects of the plot, here we find talk of new timelines and multiple realities branching off which is very much in vogue now what with all the multiversal tomfoolery going on in various Marvel and DC properties and even in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. However, where these other takes on the theme positively reveled in the complicated nature of time loops, Jones elects to take a more breezy, straightforward approach much like Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day movies and zeroes in on the thriller aspects rather than baking the noodle with garbled quantum-speak.
As a result, we get a story that moves like the clappers and that has big, hefty stakes despite never coming across as overly heavy or oppressive and as Stevens personal worries about his predicament starts to override his mission, a great deal of excitement is generated as he’s thrown at the same problem again and again with varying results.
Helping the tone along nicely is a cadre of some of the most dependable character actors you can possibly hope to get with Jake Gyllenhaal utilising all of that bizarro, weirdo energy he has into making Stevens more than just a typical, lantern-jawed hero and instead gives us a guy whose confusion and ever mounting horror at the growing realisation that he’s not actually a guy in a pod fucking about with time, makes him endearing even when some of his tactics lack refinement. Playing opposite him as his “guy in the chair” is Vera Farmiga, who takes the fact that most of her role is to stare down a camera and explain things while complaining that Stevens isn’t doing his impossible job quickly enough and makes herself the backbone of the entire, frickin’ movie in the way that only her determined delivery can. Elsewhere, Michelle Monaghan brings that incredibly endearing, everywoman persona she has to make something more than just a standard girlfriend role and Jeffrey Wright gives his best mad professor vibes as he coldly dismisses Stevens’ personal concerns as he lurches about the place with his crutch and comb-over combo.
Other directors might have used Source Code to be a never ending string of action set pieces and while each visit to the doomed train strives to be subtly different (Gyllenhaal suffers a range of perversely amusing demises a la Tom Cruise in Edge Of Tomorrow), Jones is far more interested in Hitchcockian puzzle solving and character stuff than having his lead hang outside the train, or fight on the roof or anything like that. Taking precedence is the people stuff such as Stevens attempts to get a message out to his father as the exact nature of his predicament is revealed; the interaction with the other people on the train; the growing relationships with Christina and Goodwin and even a touching note on letting people pass on with dignity.
Something of a forgotten gem that thankfully proves that Jones’ Moon wasn’t some sort of beautiful fluke, Source Code twins brain frying, quantum physics with a heaping dose of humanity that gives us a sci-fi thriller that is never further than one time-reset away from its own humanity.
Awesome Source.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 