Source Code
Jones has delivered a fast-paced, interesting action thriller that is a world ahead of the Denzel Washington-fronted mediocrity that has passed for action in recent years.

In 2009, Duncan Jones burst on to the film scene with Moon, his low-key independent directorial debut which went to pick up a number of award nominations. Now, David Bowie’s son has placed his feet firmly in Hollywood with Source Code (which, despite the film’s title, is thankfully not about the sexier sides of html – as intriguing a concept as that might’ve been). Instead, Source Code is probably best described as a combination of Speed, Back to the Future, Inception and Groundhog Day. He’s certainly grabbed his Hollywood opportunity with both hands then.

Corporal Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a train confused. A girl offers a response to a question that he didn’t ask. He has a few arguments with passengers and bursts into the toilet, looks into the mirror and, in the reflection, he sees a different man. He leaves the bathroom, the train blows up and he dies.

In most cases, this would count as a spoiler but, as all this features in the trailer, let’s go with it.

He dies. He returns to a pod where he’s greeted by a video link of an officer called Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). It is explained to him that the train he was on was not part of his life. He was not in his own body. He is part of ‘Source Code’, a programme that enables you to cross over into another person’s identity for the last eight minutes of their life. It is not time-travel, but time-realignment; a parallel reality.  At one point, Gyllenhaal says “This makes no sense” and, for the main part, he’s right. The characters do offer some semblance of an explanation; there is some mention of brain synapses in dead bodies and someone says “quantum measures…it would take weeks to explain. It’s very complicated”. Oh OK then. If it’s too complicated, we’ll just accept it’s scientific and get on with it, no questions asked.

So, the train has already exploded in the real world (where the clocks only move in one direction) and Colter’s job is not to prevent the bomb from detonating but, rather, to identify the bomber and prevent future attacks that haven’t happened yet. So, yes, he dies. In fact, he dies several times.

It’s sort of like a really difficult level on a computer game in which each time you replay it, you learn new things and get ever so slightly better at it. And Colter steadily improves. It is an intriguing concept and one that raises a number of questions for the viewer. How much can he achieve in eight minutes? What happens if he saves everyone? Do his actions affect the real world? Who is Colter in the real world?  Will we get a better explanation of how Source Code works exactly? Oh hold on, they did explain that…something to do with quantum physics, synapses, sciency things, it takes ages…erm…it’s complicated.

Aesthetically, the film is excellent. The editing is sharp, the train explosion and re-explosions from a number of angles are expertly done and, although, scenes are intended to be repetitive, it works really well. Gyllenhaal has always been a strong screen presence and Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monaghan and Jeffrey Wright are all more than capable in support roles. There’s just something missing to it. It was like the film reached a fork in the road about two-thirds through and decided to go down the route that was marked “satisfying but implausible” rather than choosing to tackle more interesting themes. Ironically, the implausibility made it unsatisfying.

Even if it is, at times, unexplainable or illogical, Jones has delivered a fast-paced, interesting action thriller that is a world ahead of the Denzel Washington-fronted mediocrity that has passed for action in recent years. A solid second film.