By Andrew Watson · April 4, 2011
I’m not ashamed to say it: “I loved Quantum Leap when I was a kid.” I was 9 or 10 with a boyhood schedule of all things Lego and Action Man, but I always carved out a primetime hour for Scott Bakula and his mental journey from one moral driven story to another. So imagine my surprise when I saw a trailer for it 20 years later, just this time in a film called Source Code. I went to the theatre armed with my childhood biases and high expectations, and Source Code delivered… almost entirely.
Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhall) wakes up on a train heading to Chicago. This is troubling, not only because when he was last awake, he was flying in a helicopter over Afghanistan. But in genuine Quantum Leap style, he discovers through a trip to the bathroom that the man staring back at him is a complete stranger: Sean Fentress. (Whoa!)
He gets little time to take all this in, (as if anybody could really) because the train explodes minutes later. It turns out, that Stevens has experienced the last 8 minutes of Fentress’ life. Seemingly beyond his will, he has been placed in a computer simulation called ‘Source Code’ in which he must live those last 8 minutes over and over and over again until he finds the man who bombed the train, in order to stop another bomb somewhere in the city. His only form of communication with the outside world is Lt. Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who observes Stevens via a webcam. But she is secretive, unwilling to tell him about the outside world or anything regarding how he has gotten to where he currently is.
It was at this point in the movie that I began to get a little nervous. Shady military corporations have been done before, and shady military corporations abusing soldiers have been done to death. But I held on, staying optimistic in the belief that the filmmakers would show us something new. In the end, Stevens relents, briefly, going back into the source code to find the bomber, but it turns out he is a pretty useless detective, chasing the wrong suspect off the train and botching an attempt to get a gun, wasting yet another opportunity. So kudos for avoiding the ‘shady military’ cookie-cutter package. Winning isn’t always about ‘winning’, life will knock us down more times than we can possibly imagine, and we learn more from our failures than our successes, so at least for me, cheering for an empathetic loser carried a certain freshness to the story.
But story is more than just character; it must also have a solid, hopefully complex, and plausible plot. Source Code has both. As Stevens tries to solve the bombing and his own whereabouts, the film adds depth to the story with the inclusion of Christina (Michelle Monaghan), a co-worker of Fentress who Stevens starts to become infatuated by. Unfortunately, she is dead, as explained by the crippled Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), who explains, “You cannot alter this reality while inside the source code.” Stevens might be heading back in time, but his experience is more like a VCR than a time machine. While Source Code’s plot powers forward, giving more and more details about the bomber and Stevens’ whereabouts, it’s this subplot that gives the film the human element it really needs. Desperate to save her, he pleads with the doctor, “At least have the decency to let me try.”
Drowned in realism, they naturally force him to do otherwise. And Source Code uses this to deliver a sucker punch to its audience and send the film flying into its second half. It manages to explain the programs secrecy and it’s antagonism towards Stevens without being predictable or clichéd, relieving my earlier fears. Source Code does well to juggle complex themes without sacrificing its plot. Ben Ripley’s script is complimented well by Duncan Jones, who gets good performances from the leads, while managing to create a visual Hitchcockian style.
Overall, Source Code does a great job of being credible and has a script, which is inventive and full of awesome ideas, but that is not to say that Source Code is perfect. Its biggest and probably inadvertent giveaways are the homage to the director in the opening titles, with bombardment of 50s music, and a propensity for long establishing shots. But the biggest bone of contention is the ending. As much as I liked it, and as much as I wanted it to happen… I just didn’t buy it.
The film did try hard to establish the end early on, but they didn’t do enough to sell it in the end. Everything was just a bit too sentimental. But for the vast majority of Hollywood movies this year alone, the unsatisfactory ending (Limitless, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Adjustment Bureau) seems par for the course. Source Code might not be perfect, but it’s still one of the best films of the year to date. And as someone who goes to films constantly, trying to analyze every flashing image that passes my eyes, I know I’ve experienced a good film when I switch off. Source Code did exactly that.
