Source Code

Life isn’t easy for Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) as a marine in Afghanistan, but in the blink of an eye he goes from flying a helicopter to sitting on a train. The stranger sat opposite smiles and starts chatting, but it’s not his name she’s using. Colter’s confusion ends abruptly several minutes later as the train explodes.

Colter awakens in a wrecked military vehicle, receiving video messages from Air Force Captain Goodwin (Farmiga), requesting his mission report. The last eight minutes were no hallucination – they were memories. Not his own, but those of Sean Fentress, a passenger headed into the Windy City. As part of the secret military program ‘Source Code’, he re-lives Fentress’ last eight minutes. His mission: to find the bomber, preventing the train, and more importantly downtown Chicago, from nuclear annihilation.

Colter demands of Goodwin how long he’s been in the program and what happened to his chopper. Answers are few and far between. Some ‘outside the box’ thinking unveils the truth about his Afghanistan memories, but could result in Source Code being jeopardized and Chicago lost. Where will Colter’s loyalties lie?

The whole cast plays brilliantly, Gyllenhaal stealing the show, with his perfect portrayal of confusion, desperation and anger. Once in a while, a director treats time with the lack of respect that builds a really good film. In Source Code, Duncan Jones follows in the footsteps of Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) and Christopher Nolan (Mememto), mixing in a twist of action and a dash of romance with the confusion of our protagonist. A great follow-up to his debut flick Moon.

Robert Gardner