Source Code Review

Duncan Jones the 39 year old British film maker has just followed up his remarkable 2009 debut Moon with yet another piece of Sci-Fi brilliance. The film takes us into the troubled mind of a man who believes himself to be a US army Captain Colter Stevens, played by (Jake Gyllenhaal)

Believed to be a US army soldier he awakes with a jolt, finding himself on a train heading for Chicago shortly before 8am on one idyllic spring morning. Before he has time to question hes wherebeing a beautifull young woman named Christina played by (Michelle Monaghan) sitting opposite him says, "I took your advice." A series of questions arise from this short piece of speech, who is she? what advice has she taken? The coversation then develops leading towards Colter questioning hes own identity. A succession of odd incidents occurs before he goes to the lavatory. There he discovers he's carrying ID identifying him as Sean Fentman, a schoolteacher, and that the face in the mirror isn't his own.This is a classic film noir amnesia plot, brilliantly handled. He is then aware that he is in someone else's life going through someone else's morning commute. Shortly after with the skyline of Chicago looming in the near distance an express train zooms by on the opposite track making the train jolt furiously, bomb explodes, seemingly killing Colter and all the other passengers. Its truly a brilliantly edited opening to a film which is high in suspense and carries extroadinary thriller like elements.

Colter than wakes up in an isolation chamber, strapped to a seat, and wearing his military flight suit. He still has no idea what's happening, except that he's being spoken to by mission controller Carol Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who calmly recites a series of memory questions to which Colter is shocked to realize he knows the answers. He learns that he's part of an operation called Beleaguered Castle, but before he can progress any further, Goodwin starts up the machinery and suddenlyColter is back on the train, at exactly the same time he first appeared there, once again speeding through Chicago with the same group of commuters.

Source code however, is not a film noir but a sort of sci-fi conspiracy movie, and while there are many twists and much additional information still to come right until the final minutes, the dramatic donnée is revealed immediately. Captain Stevens is the subject of a top-secret military experiment called "Source Code", conducted by a Dr Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), a somewhat sinister government psychologist who communicates to Colter through US air-force officer Captain Colleen Goodwin played by (Vera Farmiga) Souce code is a highly technological breakthrough inwhich properly wired deceased people can relive the last stored 8 minutes of the victim aslong as they have the same physical match. In this case Colter and Sean.

 Howevor the viewer becomes aware that the device on the train is merely a forerunner of what is to come in downtown Chicago. Stevens's patriotic task, therefore, is to locate and neutralise the madman preparing to detonate it. This he'll do by reliving Sean's last moments in a succession of eight-minute bursts until he's identified his quarry.