With his first feature, Moon,
director Duncan Jones established himself as a filmmaker capable of creating
the kind of fascinating, challenging science fiction we associate with Golden
Age writers like Asimov, Bradbury, and Leiber. With Source Code,
his second feature, Jones delivers a science fiction thriller offering an
intriguing premise, riveting execution, and a satisfying denoument. Jones not only sticks the landing, he
sticks the entire film.
Here’s the setup:
Captain Colter Stevens is an Army helicopter pilot who awakens strapped
in a kind of time machine. This
machine comes with a twist: it puts him in the body of another man, and it can
only send him to one 8-minute stretch in the man’s life: the 8 minutes before
he dies. Colter’s mission:
discover who’s responsible for killing the man and everyone on the commuter
train the man happened to be riding when it exploded.
Go. Fail. Die. Try again.
It’s a great premise, mixing aspects of Groundhog Day, “Quantum
Leap,” and Day of the Jackal.
Jones fleshes it out with a strong cast, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (a
favorite since October Sky), Michelle
Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright. He complements them with direction and photography that
reveal enough to keep us oriented and in the game, but hide enough to keep us
questioning and worrying our nails.
And it works.
We share Colter’s disorientation, his desperation. We want what he wants, we feel what he
feels, and we walk out of Source Code
exhilarated, satisfied, and ready to live those 90 minutes over again.
With Moon and Source Code, Duncan Jones is officially
two for two. I can’t wait to see
where he goes for number three.
