Source Code (2011)

Very much like Duncan Jones' first movie (Moon, 2009), "Source Code" derives from a very interesting sci-fi concept but as the movie unfolds one gets the feeling the most wasn't made of it, and that the little odds and ends don't exactly click together at the end. Yet where "Moon" was an artistic, almost poetic, labor of love, "Source Code" is much more on blockbuster mode, and that’s why it fails in being as pure and as good as the first. It doesn’t lose any time to get you inside the action, and is complete with on cue suspense/action music and characters who know exactly what is going on but who don't explain the plot from the start just for the audiences' sake (the same as “Moon”). Because of this it is deprived of real tension and suspense, or rather has a fake tension that’s not really there, but nonetheless is full of a gripping claustrophobic atmosphere, which comes from its succession of 8 minute sequences. Jake Gyllenhaal wakes up on a train on a body which is not his own. After 8 minutes the train is blown to bits by a huge bomb. Instead of dying, Gyllenhaal, a US soldier who was in Afghanistan, wakes up in what appears to be his craft, in which he is stuck. Dazed and confused, his only connection to the outside is through a monitor, in which Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright explain to him that he is in the Source Code, a secret government program which enables him to relieve the last 8 minutes of a man’s life. They explain furthermore that the bombing happened that same morning and they need him to go back again and again to the train, relieving the 8 minutes over and over again, until he finds the bomber, least he strikes back that very same day. It’s not time travel, it’s just a sort of Matrix where the last memories of everybody who died are implanted. But is it really so? As Gyllenhall is sent back again and again to the train, events unfold, not really to find the bomber (that’s is done easily, it just takes time because he goes after a lot of red herrings), but for Gyllenhall to find exactly where he is, what has happened to him, what is the true secret of the source code, and how can he save Michelle Monaghan, a passenger on the train with whom he falls in love. At first the movie makes no sense. Then, when the secret of the source code is explained, it starts making a lot of sense. And then, probably the one single time in movie history, the final twist takes the whole sense the movie had away and destroys its beauty completely. Despite its unrealistic premise, “Source Code” is a sci-fi film who had the ingredients to be, not brilliant, but at least very interesting. But the finding of the bomber is so stupidly simple that he could have done in the first five minutes of film. He just didn’t because, well, the movie had to take 2 hours. Also, the plot could be explained by Vera Farmiga in the first 5 minutes. She just doesn’t for the same reason, and Gyllenhall spends and hour going to the train 8 minutes at the time before they decide to tell him the truth. These are artificial tricks to give suspense to a movie that don’t go down well, at least to me. But all this could be acceptable if the personal problems of Gyllenhall (where he is exactly in the real world, and how can he save the passengers of the train in a reality that doesn’t exist), which take all the screen time, were brilliantly handled. They were, until the final twist. Hollywood ending? Well, give me the independent ending anytime, such as “Moon” had. “Source Code” is entertaining, has an interesting premise, and Gyllenhall and Monaghan shine in their roles. But in the end is just another blockbuster, where all is quickly explained with no sense to give it an all’s well that end’s well ending, completely out of tune to what the movie was building up for.