Movies: Source Code

It’s easy to complain about the gaps in Source Code’s logic. Any plot dealing with metaphysics, quantum physics and alternate realities simultaneously is bound to have a few issues. But like that quirky friend with a few behavioural blind-spots, we forgive them because they’re so damn amusing.

Director Duncan Jones (Moon) has crafted a brusquely paced who-dunnit. This is more thriller than sci-fi. The Hitchcockian opening scene sets the tone—an ominous soundtrack swoops us over the city of Chicago and into the train carriage, where we meet a man thrown into a situation that isn’t just fish out of water, but mind out of body. Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) has been inserted into the last eight-minutes of a man’s life. This man died, along with everyone on board—including his lovely co-passenger, Christina (Michelle Monaghan)—when a bomb exploded. This was to be the first of many, and it’s Colter Steven’s job to find out who onboard ‘dunnit,’.

 Sure the logic is murky, but most people won’t care. That’s what good films do, they make us forget the realities of everyday life, with its lint trays and theories of causality. It’s easy to pick on sci-fi movies, but when you get down to it, would any Hollywood movies exist if we wanted absolute verisimilitude? I mean, would people as beautiful as Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan really have so many problems in real life? Or so many dating issues?— well, maybe Jennifer Anniston would, but that’s a gap in logic darker than a black hole. If a movie is clever enough to make you forget how dumb it is, I think you’ve got a good time.