Jake Gyllenhaal Brings Humanity to This Agreeable Sci-Fi Thriller
It's mainly the charismatic screen presences of the four principal actors — Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright — that make Source Code (2011) so enjoyable. It also helps that director Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie) keeps up the suspense throughout the film, and there's a pleasant love story involving Gyllenhaal's and Monaghan's characters. In addition, there's an intriguing mind-bending premise about parallel realities, but what makes the movie work is that the viewer cares about the characters.
In the film, Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) emerges from a state of unconsciousness to find himself sitting on a Chicago-bound train, chatting with an attractive passenger named Christina Warren (Monaghan). She calls him Sean, and when he checks the ID in his wallet, it indicates he is a teacher named Sean Fentress. But Colter knows he's a US Army officer, and the last thing he remembers is flying a helicopter in Afghanistan. Eight minutes after Colter becomes aware he's on the train, it blows up.
Colter then finds himself alone inside some sort of a pod, communicating via video connection with Air Force Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga). Colter soon learns he's on a vital mission, and he goes through variations of his eight minutes on the train half a dozen times. Between his stints on the train, he's in the pod, talking to Goodwin and her boss, the mysterious Dr. Rutledge (Wright).
It's gradually revealed what's going on, and for many viewers it will be fun to try to figure out whether or not the film makes sense.
Bonus Materials
The Source Code DVD provides a feature-length audio commentary by director Duncan Jones, lead actor Jake Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Ben Ripley. There's a lot of discussion about the process of making the film that many listeners are likely to find tedious. However, around the time the end credits roll, the director and screenwriter talk about their interpretation of the movie, particularly the ending.
The 35-minute "Cast and Crew Insights" has extracts from interviews with the director and five actors interspersed with clips from the movie. The actors are the four principals plus Russell Peters, a real-life stand-up comic who portrays a train passenger who came in third in a national talent contest.
The 7-minute "Focal Points" is a lecture delivered by a voice-over narrator while computer-generated visual aids appear on the screen. The lecture is about rudimentary ideas that come up in the feature film, including the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics and the brain computer interface.
Finally, there is the "Source Code Trivia Track," which involves watching the feature film with trivia popping up periodically as text. Much of this consists of summaries of movies and novels with a time travel theme. The rest are factoids, the most interesting of which identifies the big sculpture that Gyllenhaal and Monaghan visit as Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Chicago's Millennium Park.
DVD Release Date: July 26, 2011
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Some Violence Including Disturbing Images, and for Language