Tuesday May 17, 2011 - "Source Code", dir. Duncan Jones (2011)

In terms of structure, the first hour unwinds in the vein of most high-concept actioners, with the minimal number of locations (for the most part limited to: train, CAOSN offices, and the darkened underground area of Gyllenhaal's consciousness, or what's left of it) allowing for a satisfyingly tight development and revelation of the whole 'Source Code' business (though, as a 90 minute entry in the genre, the background details on the development and rationalization of the project are kept appropriately vague). But then the case itself is then resolved with comparative ease, with fewer twists than I had anticipated (Jones even skips through a few replays) and the movie gives over the final half-hour to some (admittedly fairly light) expansion of the central themes of free will and of taking pleasure in the few truly satisfying moments we are granted in life. After the blackout I felt a little peeved by the failure of the film to take full advantage of its premise (a friend and I both predicted Wright's character would be revealed to be somehow responsible in order to allow his life's work to be recognized, which we both realized would make the film bizarrely similar to "Unbreakable"; we also thought that the Sean character was himself somehow involved), and inexplicable ability of Gyllenhaal's vessel to have the entire geography of the train, as well as knowledge of all passengers' comings and goings stored in his short-term memory to be explained by the final revelation of the extent of the Source Code's power. In retrospect, however, the off-kilter structure is kind of lovely, and that Jones was able to maintain writer Ben Ripley's fundamentally humane tenants of the script is laudable. All actors extremely watchable; Gyllenhaal solid, and very moving on the phone at the end; Wright moving with scary seamlessness into older crackpots; Farmiga, as has been noted elsewhere, expertly illuminates a character who is, on paper, bursting with exposition and little else; and Monaghan does a nice job with a character whose dimensionality is, on paper (again), mostly limited to her brief opening spiel (which, admittedly, gets a few repeats).