First Hit: I liked it because it required me to think and made me wonder if it was possible.
What the film lacked was a strong, clear, and viable explanation for the ability to program one person into another person’s body to replay events that have already happened.
In a 1993 film called “Brainstorm” scientists were able to record someone’s experiences onto a form of video tape. Then a completely different person could put on a specifically designed headset, play back this recorded experience and the wearer would have the same experience that was recorded.
This bit of new technology seemed plausible because the film took some time to explain how it worked to the audience. In "Source Code" the ball is dropped here by either the actor playing Dr. Rutledge (played by Jeffrey Wright), the scientist who invents this “Source Code” phenomenon, or by poor scripting. What I think I heard was; that when a human dies there is a 8 minute segment of experiences still active in the brain (like RAM) and if tapped into (through the use of electrodes and “Source Code”) within a short period of time after their death, another person, who is compatible in physical characteristics, can experience the dead person’s last 8 minutes.
The interesting thing is that they are only renting the body, because the person who is being sent in is the conscious one. OK, I tried and I’ll think about it some more but I think it goes something like that. In this film Captain Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a helicopter pilot only being brain alive, wakes up on a train.
Christina Warren (played by Michelle Monaghan) is sitting across from him and talking to him. He is perplexed about what she is saying. He's thinking; who are you? Why am I on this train? He's asking these questions because his last memory is being a helicopter pilot on a mission in Afghanistan. He’s feeling nauseous goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror only to find the body and face he's looking at isn’t his; it's somebody else’s.
Confused he makes his way back to the train car with Christina and then a bomb goes off and he is blown up with everyone else on the train. He wakes up in a small metal capsule, which I took as being the helicopter wreckage he died in (this is his last known living experience).
Captain Colleen Goodwin (played by Vera Farmiga) appears on a small video screen in front of him asking him what he learned. “Did you find the bomb?” “Did you find the bomber?” Stevens answers negatively and starts asking about what is going on. Who is in charge? What happened? Coldly Goodwin tells him he’s got to find the bomb and bomber quickly so that other lives will be saved. She turns to an assistant and tells him to recharge and bingo, Stevens is back on the same train at the same time with the same sequence of events. He sets his timer on his watch for 8 minutes and begins to try to do the job Goodwin told him to do.
He gets blown up again and again until he finds the bomb and then starts to make caring connections with Christina (who calls him by Sean Fentress - the name of the guy whose body he’s replacing). Each time the train blows up he goes back to his capsule as Stevens. He questions Goodwin and Dr. Rutledge attempting to find out more about how he is able to be in another place and time than what he knows was his last memory as Stevens. Goodwin tries to tell him more and Wright, who comes off as arrogant and self-serving, tries to explain his invention.
In the end, Stevens does complete the mission, Goodwin gives Stevens his wish, and people are saved.
Gyllenhaal is very good at giving us both an intelligent dutiful officer doing his duty as well as having compassion for Warren and others on the train and wanting to resolve an issue with his father. Monaghan is beautifully engaging and provides just the right amount of willingness and openness to understand what is going on. Farmiga is really good as the duty constrained officer who is working for an arrogant but bright boss. Wright played an either poorly written character or he poorly acted the character and I don’t know which. But this was the weakest part of the film. Ben Ripley wrote the script and I’m not sure if he did a good job and the explanation was poorly acted or if it was just one part of the script that was poorly written. However, the rest of the script was great. Duncan Jones did a great job of engaging the audience, getting Gyllenhaal to slowly realize what was going on and to make this film compelling about the possibility of being yourself in someone else’s body.
Overall: I enjoyed this film and although I’m not sure the logic hung together well with the given explanations; overall it was well done and interesting.