‘Source Code’: Movie review and trailer

Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monaghan and Jeffrey Wright carry this sci-fi thriller

BY JOE TYRRELL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

MOVIE REVIEW

Like an explorer mapping a hidden dimension, Capt. Colter Stevens, the commuter at the center of "Source Code," faces an existential conundrum.

His "X" marks a spot where "you" (not you) "are" (are not) "here" (there, everywhere).

Pleasantly played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Stevens joins this new thriller already in progress. Director Duncan Jones has given us the obligatory ominous shots swooping over buildings, in this case Chicago. And he's shown us a train gliding sleekly through morning countryside as a lone duck rises from a blue lake.

This is the point where Capt. Stevens, dozing against a window inside the train, jolts awake as though from a bad dream.

The pretty woman sitting opposite is in the midst of thanking him for career advice, so she clearly knows him. The problem is that Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) knows him as Sean Fentress, a fellow teacher.

To the disoriented Stevens, this is unknown territory. All his senses are heightened. The opening of a soda can, the woman in the aisle with the dripping coffee cup, the conductor leaning in for a ticket, all register like gunshots.

That's only fitting, though, for the last thing Stevens remembers is flying a helicopter on a mission in Afghanistan. Surly and suspicious, the captain stumbles out of his seat and into the nearest restroom, casting hard looks at his fellow passengers as he passes.

But when he locks the door behind him and looks into the mirror, a stranger stares back. Well, not a stranger. It's Sean Fentress. The anxious Christina is waiting for him in the corridor. What's going on? Boom!

The next thing Capt. Stevens knows, he's again waking suddenly, but this time in a dim compartment, upside down at first with a woman in uniform talking to him from a computer screen.

They get Stevens reoriented spatially and quickly go through some memory drills until he remembers his situation, at least partially. But Goodwin, the officer of an unidentified unit, seems too pressed for time to say much more. Crisply played by the always excellent Vera Farmiga, Goodwin wants to keep Stevens on mission.

With more prodding from her and Dr. Rutledge, an even more closed-mouth, fussily dressed civilian, Stevens recalls he has been assigned to find a bomb on Fentress' train. Well, a bomb was on the train. Until it blew up — killing everyone onboard.

But it left an electrical wisp of Fentress' conscious mind behind, the last eight minutes of his life. This mysterious unit connects Stevens with this "source code" again and again.

Each time, Stevens deduces a few more clues about the train bombing. He also gets some sketchier information about the group supporting him, named "beleaguered castle" after a solitaire game.

But what the captain really wants to do is contact his father, find out how his crew in Afghanistan are faring, and just how did he get his current assignment anyway? Those answers are more complicated.

Screenwriter Ben Ripley isn't afraid to ask big questions about time, about free will, about consciousness. He cleverly inserts these into a superficial but tightly paced plot about terrorism and countermeasures, and the fears both can engender.

Some of this can be unpleasant. For a time, "Source Code" threatens to turn into "Groundhog Day" as conceived by guards at Guantanamo Bay.

That it doesn't is a tribute to its attractive cast, including Jeffrey Wright doing a sort of science-minded Clarence Thomas impression as the preening Dr. Rutledge. He's sure he's the smartest one in the room, audience included.

The doctor would have to be to understand the pretzel logic of plot twists in the last 15 minutes or so. I'm prepared to except Rutledge's insistence that this isn't time travel, but I can't help you with the rest.

Neither can Ben Ripley, but since human scientists and mystics cannot say how consciousness arises, maintains itself or disappears, we shouldn't expect our screenwriters to fill the breach. In simpler terms, "Source Code" does what a sci-fi thriller should, it keeps on chugging. You can be sure the future's ahead.

Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it