Source Code

Source Code is director Duncan Jones follow-up to intelligent indie sci-fi success Moon. This time he's got a bigger budget, bigger stars and a script that's not his own idea. The good news is that he's still managed to produce a gripping film thats's above average in both intelligence and execution, even if it lacks a little of the originality and charm of Moon.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens - a US air force chopper pilot, who wakes up on a train, opposite an atttractive woman who's talking to him as a friend and with another man's face. Eight minutes later the train blows up and Colter finds himself inside a capsule somewhere talking to military types (Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) on a screen, who explain that they have the technology to send him into the last eight minutes of somebody's life in order for him to work out who planted the bomb in order to stop a bigger attack threatened to happpen later (this is, of course, classic movie bad guy mistake #7 - start with a small attack to give the authorities time to respond and catch you before you can pull off your catastrophic masterplan). So we get the same 8 minutes repeated with differences as Gyllenhaal looks at different likely suspects to try and catch the villain, all the while falling more and more for Michelle Monaghan's fellow passenger. Here the film throws up some good red herrings alongside the real clues before finally revealing its hand. All the while there are interesting questions in the background about where Gyllenhaal's capsule really is and how he got there from flying missions in Afghanistan. And, most importantly, about whether he can actually change what has already happened.

The explanations for the science part of this are rather glossed over, which is probably a good thing as they would probably have sounded even more ridiculous than the do if it had been explained at any length. As it is, its a interesting movie idea that works in the world of the movie. Even then, the ending raises all sorts of questions and suggests several paradoxes and wholes in the plot that the film can't quite answer. However, by this point, the film will have taken you along with it enough that you won't really complain bout being given the ending you feel it deserves (even if it doesn't make a lot of sense).

The cast are great - Monaghan believably fallable for, Farmiga touchingly human in the uniform, Wright unusually hard for him and Gyllenhaal carrying proceedings very well both in believable character and in action. Jones keeps things brief and moving to good effect and whilst this might not be as good as his debut, it shows enough to prove it was no fluke.

Overall - 7.5/10 Thoroughly engaging film built around some good ideas and strong performances.