Source Code

Source Code is spoiler-sensitive; a single sentence could ruin the experience the filmmakers intended. It is what may be referred to as a "roller-coaster" experience, with twists and turns and more twists and all that exciting stuff. Knowing this, I will make sure that I don't explain too much of the plot. And I would be careful reading reviews that don't preface this kind of assurance since a thorough explanation of the plot could compromise the surprises and clever reveals with which the film is put together. And to be frank, these surprises are why it's worth seeing. The science-fiction component has interesting ideas, but their execution is inconsistent. I saw the film with J.D. A two-hour post-film discussion on what we had just seen took place and only a very rough consensus was made. But more on that later.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a soldier who is being sent somewhere that looks like a moving train a few hours ago but actually isn't. Actually, the words "sent" and "somewhere" are misleading because where he's being "sent" has no spatial existence. But, even though it merely looks like the past, it is a perfect representation of the world as it existed at that time. In other words, it looks really really really real.

But he's not going as himself, he is usurping another body. When he looks into the mirror, he sees another man. The film, because it assumes its audiences would otherwise get confused, shows the man as Jake Gyllenhaal, even though the man looks completely different to the other passengers. I think it would have been cooler if, when he woke up, we actually saw the man he was usurping instead of Jake Gyllenhaal so that we could, you know, figure out through good acting that he was being occupied by a different mind. Oh well.

Did I mention the train blows up? I mean, what else would it do? Make all regular station stops?

After eight minutes he wakes up in a capsule. He is told by military personnel to keep doing it until he finds the guy who blew up the train.

Okay I won't say any more about the plot. All plot exposition I've given you learn by the first, oh, I dunno, say, 13 minutes? Maybe I've said too much. This is after all, a roller-coaster movie. The entire first half of the film is cut together so that you are left completely in the dark as to what is going on. There are a few red herrings that in retrospect kind of, if you will, stink up the film. But it is an exciting film if you can temporarily forget about them, which I did.

About halfway through the movie, you sort of learn what's going on. The film assumes we know enough. Maybe we do. But I should point out something.

After discussing the events of the film with J.D., I read some reviews on the internet. There is no clear consensus as to what is actually happening in this film. You may have heard that it is a time travel film. Ryan Lambie from Den Of Geek describes the plot as (don't worry I won't give anything away) that of a man who is required to "travel repeatedly back … in time." Peter Howell of The Toronto Star writes, perhaps facetiously, that he is able to "twist time, space and DNA." But some critics are clear in their review that it is not a time travel film. Tim Robey from The Telegraph writes that "[i]f it sounds like time travel, it isn't." And Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle writes that a certain object that is integral to the plot (I remind the reader I am being vague purposely) is "not, strictly speaking, real," and that we are seeing "a kind of echo memory." Some critics don't commit either way. Ryan Fleming from Digital Trends writes of certain sequences: "It is not real, and yet in a sense it is." If you're confused by that, you should be; it makes no sense, and yet in a sense it does.

It can't be a time travel movie because when he supposedly goes back in time, all changes he makes have no effect on the future. The pseudo-science babble also clearly states that it isn't time travel, and that the world he sees is made up of information collected from electric-magnetic signals emitted by humans in the surrounding area. Or something crazy like that. But it can't be an "echo memory" because the traveller doesn't have the memories of the body he's usurping. He has his own memories. And he also is able to explore areas of which the usurped body had no experience. The critics who talked about parallel realities are closest to getting it right. The film suggests strongly that the worlds he revisits are just as real as the reality from which he came.

The film is a better roller-coaster than it is an exhibition of science-fiction ideas. There are ambiguities that left me asking a lot of questions, and some of them could be answered with intelligent argumentation, using clues provided throughout the film. Some of them, however, suggested lazy writing. For example, what happens to the mind of the body Gyllenhaal's character usurps? Does he cease to exist? And if he does, then what kind of reality is it where a mind randomly enters it and takes over its body? How real can that reality be? And the end. Oh my God, the end. What the hell was that?

This film resulted less in discussion of its ideas and more in attempts to make it intelligible. In the end, J.D. and I had to agree that there isn't enough conclusive evidence to support any one of our several theories. This isn't always a bad thing, but somehow, for Source Code, it was a bad thing.