After the entertainment at Andaz last night I headed over to West India Quay to check out ‘Source Code‘, the new sci-fi film from Duncan Jones, who previously headed ‘Moon’, the excellent 2009 Sam Rockwell vehicle.
The main drive of the film centers around army pilot Colter Stevens’ (Jake Gyllenhaal) repeated segments where he has to enter the body of another person on a train and spend exactly 8 minutes trying to figure out what killed the passengers, and trying to prevent something worse from happening. Now the ideas here are not new – in fact there are echoes of Quantum Leap, Groundhog Day and even Donnie Darko (Gyllenhaal’s first big ticket appearance) in the plot, but the execution is pretty flawless and there are some monumental twists and turns and not a few surprises for those audience members not giving it their full attention. There’s even a bit of romance thrown into the mix for people who don’t get the science.
If I have one quibble with the film they didn’t resolve what I thought was an important question regarding alternate realities, but then I’m completely geeky when it comes to these things and not easily satisfied with the way Hollywood tends to treat quantum physics… If you’re up for a rollercoaster ride of a movie with an elaborate and well thought-out plot that will keep you guessing, get yourself down to the cinema. Even Rotten Tomatoes give’s it a solid 90+%