There's a lot of pros and one dastardly con to Source Code. The movie begins with everyone's favorite doe eyed soulful white actor, Jake Gyllenhaal, waking up in another man's body on a train heading into Chicago. He believes he is Captain Colter Stevens (A stupid name and they find as many opportunities to say it as possible). But there is some good news, he's sitting across from Michelle Monaghan, not too shabby. He has nary a clue as to what's happening and pretty soon the fucking train explodes. He comes to in some sort of capsule. We're just as confused as he is and by this point I was still pretty riveted. He learns that he is part of some sort of experiment where he is sent into this dead man's last eight minutes of consciousness in order to find out who planted the bomb. Upon learning this, I thought about his first eight minutes and immediately knew who the bomber was. It was way too obvious. He is sent in over and over again, unable, for the most part, to get his bearings and figure anything out at all. Duncan Jones really excels during this stretch of the movie. He manages to make each 8 minutes both identical yet refreshing. It's easily the best stretch of the film.
Gyllenhaal is actually pretty good in this role. I usually think he looks like he has to take a dump, or that he just took a dump. In his pants. Those are his two acting looks. Anyway, he was likable and had good chemistry with Monaghan. Vera Farmiga and Jeffery Wright are never quite able to flesh out their characters, the are flat throughout. Farmiga is some sort of science officer liaison and Wright her superior. They are Gyllenhaal's contact to the actual world though from the beginning it's clear he exists in some unfamiliar context in the outside world.
Finally Gyllenhaal is able to pull his shit together and figure out who the bomber is. He confronts him and gets enough information about him to enable Farmiga to direct police to his capture. He's a pasty, affluent looking white guy named Derek Frost who was apparently going to detonate a dirty bomb in downtown Chicago because he thinks you have to reduce a society to rubble before you can build it back again. Gyllenhaal's only wish after aiding the Air Force in his capture is that they send him back to the eight minutes so he can try and save all of the passengers and then die when the Source Code ends. I won't tell you the end, only that is impossible and terrible.
My big frustration with Source Code is that it is thriller masquerading as a hard SF movie. For as many times as Jeffery Wright mutters, "Eh, it's quantum physics," there are an equal amount of times where things happened that completely defy all forms of physics. I'm no going to break down every issue I had with the movie, you can go see it for yourself, because I don't really feel like working that long on this post. But I'm also not going to completely dismiss Source Code because I still kind of liked the movie. Duncan Jones' second effort is ultimately very watchable even with the huge plot holes.
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