SOURCE CODE centers on a soldier (Jake Gyllenhaal, JARHEAD) who, as part of an experimental government program finds himself in the body of an unknown commuter living and reliving a harrowing train bombing until he can find out who is responsible for it.
Anyone eager to see Duncan Jones' follow-up to MOON can rest easy - the directors first feature film wasn't a flash in the pan.
Handling a bigger budget, bigger name actors, and crucially, bigger expectations - Jones' latest head-scratcher is a glorious success in about 90% of what it tries to do.
Familiar themes abound - a small cast, enclosed spaces, a script that asks questions of the viewer - and an ending that will please some as much as it disappoints others.
After Sam Rockwell's glorious performance in MOON ('Walking on Sunshine' will always raise a smile now!), Jake Gyllenhaal has some big boots to fill - the pleasant surprise is that he fills those boots well. Having not previously been stretched beyond using his puppy dog eyes or a teenage scowl to get by, Gyllenhaal's performance really has the viewer buying into his situation - a crucial requisite in a film that replays a similar situation over and over.
Michelle Monaghan has little to do and in many ways is along for the same ride as the audience - her confusion, distrust, disbelief but eventual support for Gyllenhaal mirroring the viewers reaction.
It's not perfect, but a big budget film (well, around $32 million) that encourages you to think, encourages you to look closer and encourages you to invest your emotion in the characters, well, that's a keeper in todays industry.
That marmite ending has (wrongly) been the focus of too many reviews - there's no doubt that Jones enjoys a bittersweet finale and maybe this one is bitter too sweet. But hey, when you've paid your money, when you've willingly gone along for the ride - I think most would rather leave the cinema smiling than scowling ...
Duncan Jones made his triumphant writing and directorial debut back in 2009 with Moon. Simply put, the film was an astounding feat from but a $5m. budget, which was considered pocket change in comparison to some of the year's biggest films. Duncan Jones was able to do so much with comparatively little, and all eyes were on him to see how he would perform with his follow-up feature film, Source Code.
By all accounts, the director made good on his first film's promise, creating an utterly fantastic film that, as all good films do, only gets better upon multiple viewings. This time around, Jones was granted a significantly bigger budget of $32m., and the film performed terrifically at the box office, with returns of more than $120m. And its popularity at the box office is truly a reflection of its worth as a brilliant film, rather than just a reflection of a marketing campaign of saturation.
After making a name for himself with Moon, which starred the talented Sam Rockwell and legendary Kevin Spacey, Jones was able to again sign an outstanding cast, led by the terrific Jake Gyllenhaal, and supported by the rising Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga. All performances in this film, from the leading cast to the smaller extras, are immensely impressive, and there isn't a moment from start to finish that doesn't entirely hook its audience, and have them wondering what will happen next.
The film opens with Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Captain Colter Stevens, awakening aboard a passenger train heading for central Chicago. Opposite him is a woman he does not recognise (Monaghan), but who recognises him. After a series of minute details - coffee accidentally spilled on his shoe, a drinks can opened behind him - he finds him way into the train's bathroom, and to his surprise, the face looking back at him is not his own. Panicking, he stumbles out of the bathroom into the arms of the first lady opposite him, and just as she tries to tell him that everything is going to be okay, the entire train explodes into a ball of flames that makes its way down the carriage in slow-motion, looking utterly beautiful and destructive in its perfect clarity. Clearly, much attention has been paid to the minute details of the film to ensure we appreciate its astounding visuals throughout.
Captain Stevens is rocketed back into a darkened pod, and opposite him there is a woman on a screen by the name of Captain Goodwin (Farmiga). Confused, with no idea of what has just happened, Goodwin slowly introduces Stevens and us to the basic tenet of the film: Stevens is the first to be testing a new technological creation, known as Source Code. The technology allows someone to be embedded within the last eight minutes of a person's memory and re-live those minutes. Goodwin tells Stevens that the train he woke up on exploded earlier that morning, and someone on that train has threatened further attacks on Chicago, and this time on a much larger scale. It is Stevens' job to find this man or woman, and put a stop to any further attacks.
Stevens travels back and forth between the exploding train and the pod, each time returning to Goodwin with a scrap of information in his efforts to uncover the identity of the bomber. Though the basic premise might be difficult to describe as 'ground-breaking', it the genre is nonetheless one that has not been filmed so well until now. Jones' direction of Source Code is eye-opening, jaw-dropping, and mind-blowingly fantastic. Re-living the same eight minutes over and over in a film has the obvious potential pit-fall of becoming repetitive in a short space of time, yet he manages to always keep every iteration of those eight minutes original, alive, and imaginatively shot, proving his worth as a director. Not once do we feel like these characters are stuck in a rut, even though we know that in fact they literally are, and that is something that is incredibly difficult to pull off.
Source Code is definitely one of those films that I would recommend should be watched in High Definition, on Blu-Ray, wherever possible. The film's cinematography is simply beautiful, and the visuals Jones and his team have created for it can only be appreciated to their full potential on the Blu-Ray format. Every flame in every explosion, every ripple in the river passing by the train, every tiny detail that the filmmakers have paid attention to capturing, all are utterly stunning in High Definition, and are well worth the slight increase in price in comparison the dramatic increase in viewing enjoyment. Source Code is a film that deserves to be seen in the best possible format, and Blu-Ray is just that. It is an absolutely fantastic film that will keep you guessing from the moment it begins to its roller-coaster ride of a climax, and you can be sure that it is a ride you will fall in love with and want to take again and again.
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The director of the acclaimed 'Moon' (2009), Duncan Jones, helms this sci-fi action thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Soldier Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers that he is part of a government mission to identify the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. The experiment, known as the 'Source Code', enables its subjects to take on a person's identity for the last eight minutes of their lives. Colter has been programmed to relive the incident over and over again, piecing together clues until he can figure out who the suspect is and prevent another large-scale terrorist attack. Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright co-star.
Please note this is a region B Blu-ray and will require a region B or region free Blu-ray player in order to play Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is on a mission to identify a bomber who destroyed a train just hours earlier and who plans to kill thousands more with a much larger explosion in the heart of Chicago A top-secret program named ‘Source Code’ allows Colter to exist briefly as another man in the parallel reality of the doomed commuter train Each time he returns to the train Colter has just eight minutes to uncover the bomber’s identity The more he learns the more convinced he becomes that he can prevent the deadly blast from ever happening – unless time runs out first
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