Make Every Second Count.
Source Code is an intelligent suspenseful science fiction thriller with a clever script and excellent performances.
The premise of the story, like an updated version of Groundhog Day (1993) for the attention deficit generation, repeatedly casts the central protagonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) back into a single 8-minute period of time on a speeding train. Groundhog Day's weatherman Phil Connors' comparatively leisurely 24 hours are compressed into the high pressure intensity of Gyllenhaal's character's situation, and the minor misadventures and personal tragedies punctuating small town life in Punxutawney are upgraded to kick-ass action sequences and life-threatening explosions.
Like Gyllenhaal's character, the audience is thrown right from the very start of the film into a very confusing situation, and a large part of the fun for the audience is working out, in parallel with him, why he is there and what the heck is going on. Like Groundhog Day, more fun is then had exploring the parameters of the situation, introducing permutations, and learning how to "game" or otherwise exploit the situation.
Without dropping any specific plot spoilers, and without getting into questions of strict scientific legitimacy, I can say that for me the story develops and concludes very satisfyingly. Geeky types like me, familiar with the standard tropes of time travel fiction, will probably see a key plot revelation coming quite a long way off, but the difficulty of avoiding a degree of predictability is a problem common to all popular genres and not a major criticism.
If there is anything that doesn't work so well for me, it is a recurring story thread of a person Gyllenhaal's character needs to contact. Somehow, this seemed tacked on, not intrinsic but as if it was intended to manipulate the audience's sympathies.
As for the performances, the film stands or falls primarily on the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, and he carries the role with ease, combining a character of intelligence and sensitivity with a believable potential for physical action and even violence. Vera Farmiga also impresses as Goodwin, ably intimating her character's internal conflict between personal empathy and strict by-the-book professional competence. Within a narrow range of rather repetitive dialogue, as Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson pointed out in their review, Michelle Monaghan keeps her performance fresh and apparently spontaneous.
I don't mean to make too much of the similarities with Groundhog Day, as this is quite a different film, in a way more similar to Tony Scott's fun but somewhat less compelling Deja Vu (2006). Beyond the confines of the story itself, looking at the character arc, and even the morals of the stories, one has to say that Groundhog Day has far more to give and far more to say than either Source Code or Deja Vu.
Groundhog Day stands the test of repeated viewings, remaining delightful. If Source Code can achieve that, it will have done very well.
- Rating: Full price
- When seen: 17 Apr 2011
- Where seen: Cinema
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Sources:
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Amendment: Added ranking image.
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