Copyright 2011 Summit Entertainment
★ ★ ★ ★
I went to the movie theatre over the weekend for the first time in a couple of months (outside of the 5th Quarter premiere a few weeks ago, but I didn’t pay for a ticket for that). My girlfriend, Maddie, had mentioned wanting to go see this movie Source Code. Being that this time of year is usually when all the worst movies come out and that 2011 has been off to a riveting start (note sarcasm) with movie selection, I wasn’t too interested in spending money on the venture. However, I looked into the reviews online and imdb.com, and it looked like this might be a good film to see. In the end, I’m happy I went.
This is the second film from director Duncan Jones; his first was 2009’s Moon. The film starts with Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) waking up on a train. He is disoriented and doesn’t seem to know where or who the woman (Michelle Monaghan) across from is. He moves through a series of events and interactions on the train trying to figure out what is going on and why all this strange phenomena is happening to him. After 8 minutes, the train explodes and he warps into a capsule. In the capsule, he is being monitored and spoken to by a Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). Stevens learns that he is part of a top secret experiment involving “time reassignment,” in which he is working towards finding the culprit who planted the bomb on the train. Without giving too much away, the film gets more and more complexing as it moves forward and takes advantage of its interesting play on “time travel” and parallel universes.
Gyllenhaal, Monaghan and Farmiga, all perform quite well and convincingly in their roles. Jeffrey Wright also plays an intricate role as the head of the Source Code Program. The story is a fine mixture of action in the train sequences and dialogue heavy character building in the capsule scenes between Stevens and Goodwin.
The science behind some of the events in the film definitely warrants suspension of disbelief. This is, however, good science fiction through and through. The pacing, direction and interesting story all come together to make a really entertaining movie and, in the end, what more can you ask for? Not all films have to be amazing works of art to be truly good films; this film is definitely one of those. Would I call it a masterpiece? No. A work of art? No. A very entertaining, well made motion picture? Yes.
notesonafilm 