Immy's Review: Source Code

Source Code

Directed: Duncan Jones

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright, Michael Arden

Genre: Mystery, Sci-fi, Thriller

Stars: 4.9/5

(Warning: Contains Spoilers)

I have never come across this film before, until the other night when I saw the trailer for it appear on Channel 4. I found it interesting and I wanted to watch it from the first look. I progressed by asking on Twitter if it was worth a watch and many people were saying it was the best film they've seen/it’s a really great film, to some saying it was a terrible film and incredibly confusing. (I’ve learnt not to take too much notice on people’s views on a film as we’ve all got different tastes as to what is ‘good’ – but it was interesting to see if the majority recommended it.) My curiosity served me well anyway.

The opening scene was where a guy (who we find out is Sean) wakes up on a train and is confused. He is sitting opposite to a woman who he doesn't know, but she knows him and is talking to him as a friend. It appears that she thinks he is someone else to who he thinks he is. He then goes on to the toilet to calm down and collect his thoughts only to look in the mirror and he’s someone else! Looking in the pockets and at the clothes, he is in someone else’s body as he has Sean’s wallet and suit on. He then goes to tell the woman who he was sitting opposite that he doesn't know who he is or what he’s doing there – but then there’s a train explosion, which comes off the track and kills everyone on board.

We then are transported to a pod, where he is strapped in a seat position and here he is a Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) and has been put in to do exercises, and it appears that the train was a training exercise too and is told he is a solider who has to figure out where the bomb is situated on the train.

It was an odd, yet completely gripping film. It seems so easy to follow, so I was kind of baffled when people said it was confusing? Personally I found it very easy to follow. I don’t know if this was down to the fact that I watch a lot of this type of film, or the plot just wasn't actually that difficult? I think it may be a combination of both.

He is then put back into the ‘exercise’ for a second time and he’s been told to find clues as to where the bomb is. He is told that he has 8 minutes until the train explodes again to find it and report it. He finds the bomb in the air vent in the toilet, but fails to disconnect it (as he doesn’t know he needs to – Simply because he thinks it’s all a programme.) It definitely was good on the point that the film was progressive, every time he went back into the scenario again we learnt that little bit more about Colter, Sean, Christina (lady opposite him on train) and the mission as a whole. In between the ‘exercise’ and the pod we see Colter trying to figure out who he is and where everyone else he knows is and it is emotional. However it was quite clear from 10 minutes in exactly what has happened and what was going on – which I think for me let the film down a little, but then on the other hand it was cleverly done to provide twists in the film.

Colter goes in for the third time and he had been told that it could have been a phone detonator that set off the bomb on the train and that the phone went off the second another train passed – so it had been cleverly timed to cause a lot of chaos in the city of Chicago. He keeps looking around trying to find clues the whole time and makes eye contact with people he thought was suspicious. He became suspicious of a man in the toilets after getting himself and Christina off the train and causes a scene only to find out that it wasn’t that man and the train blew up again. We see that Colter gets increasingly desperate to save the people on the train and try and control the scenario – but whatever he tries, the train still always blow up.

He gets sent back to the pod and learns that there is going to be another attack in the Chicago in a matter of hours so he is against the time to find the person responsible for the bomb. He then goes back to the ‘exercise’ once again to retrieve a gun that’s in the conductors section of the train only to get tazored.

Back again at the pod, he asks for more information and to be briefed on the mission and here he finds out that he’s in fact dead, but part of his brain is still activated and that they’re using him to be in someone else body for the last 8 minutes of their life. The source code is essentially the brain loop that the person remembers before their death – so it explained why Colter was Sean in the first scenes and why he only had 8 minutes on the ‘exercise’ before the train exploded. (That might help you if you found that you were confused by the film?) He begs to the scientist who created the Source Code to put him to rest after the mission as he doesn’t want to continue with the missions after this one.

I liked this bit as it explained it clearly what is going on and it was a mixed reaction of being excited and sympathy for the character as a whole, but as they argued over whether it was right to keep his mind ‘active’ just to solve these attacks was right – I didn’t think so, but he did do good! But it was easy to see that he was dead from the beginning as Goodwin (the controller of the ‘exercise’) wouldn’t talk to him about his father or anything much out of the mission itself so it brought suspicions early on.

He is put inside the ‘exercise’ again and with all the knowledge he has of the entire mission as a whole, and we see him struggling with the terms of his death and also getting closer to Christina who also tells him he is dead and how it happened. He continues with the mission and thinks he sees the culprit of the explosion, getting off the train and follows him to a van where they have a physical fight where the culprit shoots both Colter/Sean and Christina – Colter asks “why” and the culprit explained that the world is a horrible place and that it needs starting again but to do that it needs to be in rubble to start afresh. However, the train still blows up.

Returning to the pod once again, after completing the mission of who sets the bomb off, Colter isn’t pleased to just leave things as they are and even though the bomb has already gone off and everyone has already died he doesn’t feels satisfied to leave it as that. He wants to save everyone.

He talks to Goodwin and asks her to turn off the life support so that he can finally die in peace. He then continues to ask to go back into the ‘exercise’. He finds a second detonator attached to the bomb, defuses it and then alerts the authorities after chaining Derek (the culprit) to the train. He then uses his remaining moments with Christina in asking what she would do if she knew she only had seconds left to live, and they shared a kiss. Goodwin turned off his life support, but Colter still survives and is shocked that his mind is still in the body of Sean in an alternate reality.

The last scene is seeing Colter and Christina hand in hand getting off the train, happy.

I really enjoyed this film and I would watch it again, I think it’s one of them films that you’d get a little bit more out of each time you’d watch it. You would probably see more of the clues – but for a first viewing it was fantastic that you could see things just like Colter, as the screen swerved around you couldn’t stick to watching a particular person for very long, so it brought interesting spin on the story.

I gave the film 4.9 as I did find it a little obvious that Colter was dead early on which didn’t bring much to me when it was finally revealed in the film, it was good to know that what I thought would happen, happened. But, it was very thrilling to watch and emotional at times as Jake Gyllenhaal was fantastic for the role as a confused and wrecked man.