What is this voguish phenomenon we keep seeing from Avatar to Inception and now Source Code? Is it science fiction, virtual reality, cyber fiction, the multiple lives of computer gaming, or just messing big-time with your head? Whichever, it is a playground that film-makers adore, especially when layers of reality can be used to create a constant tension and mystery for the audience, and the characters. Or as they say in this movie, “It’s about parabolic calculus, quantum physics ... it’s complicated.” Jake Gyllenhaal, our hero, then looks very puzzled indeed.
Gyllenhaal is Captain Colter Stevens, a former military helicopter pilot, who suddenly finds himself on a commuter train to Chicago, rather than on a mission in Afghanistan. A woman traveller opposite seems to know him. She is, of course, rather comely, and played by Michelle Monaghan. He discovers his wallet belongs to another man, a history teacher, and the face in the mirror is not his own. Then the train explodes, in a horrendous tunnel of fire, killing everyone on it. Stevens comes to consciousness in a sealed military capsule.
This is merely the set-up for a plot in which Stevens must return again and again to the train to relive the last eight minutes of life in another man’s body, until he finds the bomb and the dastardly villain who planted it. It’s Miss Marple does Groundhog Day, but with more disturbing resonances as those repeated, red, slo-mo train explosions recall the London Tube bombings.
The film is stylishly directed by Duncan Jones, who was much fêted for his low-budget breakthrough with Moon, and there is the same atmosphere of isolation, disinformation and loneliness in the sealed-off life of Stevens as he returns each time to his capsule, piecing more of the bomb plot together. His handler, seen only via a computer screen, is Captain Goodwin, played simultaneously soft and steely by Vera Farmiga. Is Stevens dead? Alive? An avatar? The dissembling voice over the computer seems to go right back in our, and no doubt Jones’s consciousnesses, to Hal in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Jeffrey Wright is the mad scientist in charge of the Source Code military programme, and he hams up the part irritatingly. Farmiga, on the other hand, can transfix even while pixellated, as her intelligence shines through.
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Gyllenhaal has a big-eyed, puppyish innocence about him. He seems just a tiny bit thick, as he crashes around the train indulging in wild accusations and action man antics, while simultaneously working a heavy North by Northwest flirtation with the mysterious girl. There are uneasy slides into comedy, and for those of us hardened by an overdose of Jack Bauer defusing dirty bomb timeclocks in 24, the scenes could be more nail-biting.
The two halves of this film do not quite mesh, and the promise at the beginning of a hyper-real sheen to the camerawork and melodramatic music fade away to something more pedestrian. Yet there are enough philosophical conundrums and layers to keep an audience engaged, wondering to what extent you can change the past to save the future.
This thriller is full of potential, but falls slightly short of expectations, perhaps as Jones gets to grips with satisfying mainstream audiences. But it is more than a second-class season ticket to Moon. Duncan Jones, is, after all the son of David Bowie (whose The Man Who Fell to Earth is newly out on DVD). Jones a.k.a. Zowie Bowie has said in interviews he looks forward to the day that his ancestry is no longer remarked upon. With Moon and Source Code, he is on his way.
12A, 93mins