Brilliant concept. Great execution. A sci-fi classic.
Another in a longish line of high-concept mainstream movies. In many of those movies it's fashionable to have a confusing story which people will interpret as being brilliant/genius and which has an in-built "repeat" viewing factor due to the baffling nature of the story which has just been told. Think movies like "Inception".
"Source code" is a far superior film to "Inception" but will probably lack the kudos of the latter. Briefly, the story concerns a commuter ("Colter Stevens", played by Jake Gyllenhaal) on a train who has an identity crisis. Before he can resolve it, he dies with all the other passengers in a massive explosion. Afterwards (!), the man awakes in a weird chamber where he is questioned by military (or some such) personnel about who caused the explosion. Don't worry, this is not a 'spoiler'...it's established very early on in the movie that this is what has happened.
Of course, you get questions along the lines of "Which reality is real?". Going with the sci-fi explanation (involving secret military experiments) you have a plausibility to the scenario which is very nicely unambitious and may in fact have some science (perhaps speculative) to it...involving information retained in the brain post-death...some 8 minutes...which gives rise to another gimmick of the movie...the character reliving those 8 minutes in order to solve the mystery of the train explosion. The latter part of the scenario may be hard to rationalise as remotely plausible, but I just ran with the premise...perhaps it might have been a more plausible story if the movie didn't go down that path...a more 'realistic' science fiction, perhaps.
This is a great story which seems to have no loose ends to it, at least on one level...the film makers provide you with clues as to what is happening and you aren't left high and dry like similarly themed movies can do.
P.S. on reflection, the part of the movie dealing with 'reliving' the 8 minutes of memory in the way that they did, did strike me as being a loose-end/plot-hole...but you just enjoy the ride at the time.
A lovely, dark, morbid fantasy.
If you like this film, some others and a video game with similar themes include:
12 Monkeys
The matrix
Dark city
Groundhog day
Assassin's Creed (video game...personally I don't find the first game in the series to be fun to play...the sequel is much more playable).
[Originally posted on another site on 17 May 2011 according to their dating.]
