Oh Boy!

Next up in my film blog catch up is one starring Jake Gyllenhaal, haven't seen him for a while. The film is about a man who somehow uses a computer program to leap into another man’s body and change his decisions in order to find out about certain happenings and events.

No, I’m not talking about Quantum Leap the movie, I’m talking about Source Code. It doesn't quite have the charm that Sam and Al had together with good ol' Ziggy and Gooshie but that doesn't mean it's not a good movie.

Now, in the beginning there is a man named Col. Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) who is being sent back in time, into the source code, to find out what exactly happened to a train that was blown up earlier in the day. How does he do this? Well the source code throws him into another man’s life, he takes over his body and then has the power to do whatever he likes without changing any future events. Or does he?!

Well yes, kind of, as the movie progresses we get to see things that start to make you wonder about which reality is the real reality or whether or not they all are. Who knows. On his presumed first leap into a man’s body, Sam, I mean Col. Colter Stevens is confused about his surroundings, he doesn’t get it, and neither does the audience. He is sat across from an obvious love interest who seems destined to become important in the movie. Well she isn't that important, she's dead, but that doesn't stop our Jake from trying to save her.

Colter finds out his new body’s identity: Sean Fentress, by looking into a mirror and checking his wallet. Yes, I desperately wanted him to say "oh boy" when glaring at his refelction, but it never came. He spends a while trying to figure out what’s going on until ‘BOOM’ the train explodes and he awakens inside a strange cell-like pod, dressed in military garb and strapped in like a man stuck in a tree hanging from his parachute.

He is greeted by a woman on a monitor before him and he learns all about the source code and his mission: to find out what happened on the train, who the bomber was etc. Apparently that information will prove quite handy in the real world.

Imagine if we actually had one of these machines that made us leap back in time to find out what actually went on. We could use it to save so many lives, but to be honest I think it’d just end up in the hands of the News of the World, so it’s probably best that it doesn’t exist.

I might as well leap in here and warn you of spoilers.

So yes, Gyllenhaal leaps back into his body for round two. He succeeds in finding the bomb and now has to find out just who put it there. Everyone on the carriage is a suspect and each one looks pretty innocent really. Except one who leaves the bathroom looking very nervous about something. He leaves the train before the explosion so Gyllenhaal follows him, eventually confronting him and ending up scrapping on a train platform. Whilst doing so an explosion goes off in the distance. Guess it wasn’t him then. But hold on Gyllenhaal is still alive! He’s only supposed to have the last eight minutes of a man’s life you see, and well here he is, still alive after that time expired. Well not for very long, during the scrap he is kicked onto the rail track and hit by a train. Bugger.

Gyllenhaal spends most of his time in this movie sleuthing, trying to figure out whodunit, as do we I suppose. I found that I wasn’t 100% sure about who it was but I did guess right first time, all be it I disregarded it after a while. I should have stuck to my guns! That'll teach me.

While Gyllenhaal is sleuthing and being a general bad-ass, he is trying to figure out who he is, and how he got here. He knows his name, and that he was in the US army serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. As many people in the audience would have figured out, he is indeed dead, but part of his brain lives on, and he is able to live on through this machine that leaps him into the past. I should stop using the word leap.

After much deducing and saving the world and all that jazz, Gyllenhaal manages to get his monitor friend to fire him back into the source code and attempt to live on in a separate dimension. He succeeds in deactivating the bomb, catching the perpetrator, calling his father and getting the girl. How lovely.

I really enjoyed Source Code, I thought it was something different to most science fiction movies out recently. There is something about it that reminds me a lot of Quantum Leap, I did keep holding out hope for Al to appear holding his trusty keypad that made silly noises and told him what Ziggy says, but it never happened. That’s the only way I can think of to make it better: Al. Never mind.

Yes, so I enjoyed this movie; I thought it had an interesting plot, all be it a little implausible, a great Jake Gyllenhaal performance and good supporting characters. I can’t really fault it that much really, even though the film replays eight minutes quite a few times, it manages not to become repetitive and it even challenges ethical dilemmas along the way.

The film ends up being about dimensions rather than time travel which I found quite cool, the idea that there are several versions of you wandering around making different decisions to the ones you made. Potentially there could be trillions of different versions of me. I wonder what the me who decided not to watch Batman and Robin as a child is up to these days. Probably enjoying himself a bit more.

The end of the film is also pretty decent. Sure it’s a happy ending, I thought it would freeze in time when they kissed but it didn’t. Good really as I would probably be sat here ranting about how he survived longer than 8 minutes when he exited the train to have a fight with that nervous bloke.

So yes, a happy ending was had by all. Well except one person: Sean Fentress, whose life has been hijacked by a Jake Gyllenhaal. Poor guy never saw it coming.

Final verdict: 4 Stars. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and a breath of fresh air for the sci-fi genre.