Source Code

It took me a while to get around to it, but I finally sat down to watch Duncan Jones' follow-up to Moon, Source Code, this week.  If I had put a little more thought into my timing, I could have watched it on Groundhog Day and had myself a very poignant moment.  Hindsight, people, hindsight...

Source Code opens with a very disoriented Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) waking up on a commuter train, heading for Chicago.  The woman sitting across from him, Christina (Michelle Monaghan) is talking to him and calling him "Sean."  The last thing he remembers is piloting a helicopter in Afghanistan, so Colter is just as mystified as the audience is.  Things get weirder when he runs to the bathroom and sees an unfamiliar face in the mirror.  What the hell is happening here?  And then the train explodes, killing everyone on board.

The end.

Colter wakes up in a military facility, in some sort of testing chamber or something.  There, he gets a little background on his situation (via a monitor) from Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga).  A terrorist has bombed the Chicago Metra Commuter Rail and contacted the authorities; this is just as an opening act for his next attack, which will be the detonation of a nuclear device somewhere in Chicago.  That's awfully sporting of the terrorist, to give authorities a heads-up.  That's not completely idiotic in the least.  Thanks to a highly experimental program run by Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), the authorities may be able to stop the next bombing, but the clock is ticking.  Rutledge's program allows Colter's consciousness to hop into the mind of Sean, one of the victims of the bombing, and relive the eight minutes prior to the explosion.  Colter isn't bound by Sean's actions, though; Colter can make different choices and do different things in those eight minutes.  Basically, Colter is being sent into a close-looped alternate reality, where the same people will do the same things, unless Colter influences them differently; after the eight minutes, Colter awakes in his metal pod thing, reports, and is sent back over and over, until he catches the bomber.  But what about Colter?  What makes him the one person who can stop the bomber?  And what about the people on the train?  If Colter is creating an alternate reality, couldn't he affect the future outside of those eight minutes?  Couldn't he save everyone?

I ask the tough questions, Jake

That may sound a lot like a plot-heavy science fiction story, but director Duncan Jones manages to make this into a fairly taut thriller.  There is a sense of urgency here that the whole "reliving the same moments over and over again" concept should probably negate, but strangely does not.  Kudos to Jones for that.  I thought the movie looked and felt fine, with solid performances from the cast and some clever choices (like not having the science in this fiction explained) that made this cerebral concept into a bit of an action movie.  And I mean that in an unexpectedly good way.

Jake Gyllenhaal heads up the cast of Source Code, and I liked him just fine.  I'm not a big Jake supporter, and this isn't his best work, but he handled an interesting character with unconventional stresses well enough.  I thought Michelle Monaghan was charming as the secondary character; she was stuck repeating a lot of the same things, but her character grew on me as the film progressed.  The same cannot be said about Jeffrey Wright's character, who is comically shallow and abrasive.

Funniest moment is when Wright fastidiously parts his bald spot

I like Wright, but his character would have been 200% better if he acted sympathetic or vaguely human; his choices would have had dramatic impact then, instead of simply being the inevitable move of a villain.  Vera Farmiga is okay in a fairly limited role, if only because she shows evidence of an inner conflict.  The rest of the cast was largely inconsequential, but I did recognize Michael Arden and Russell Peters in shallow roles.

On the one hand, I really want to like Source Code.  It manages to pull off a cool science fiction concept without a huge budget, and its charm comes primarily from the characters and not the plot.  I wasn't bothered by the science in this movie, either.  Sometimes movies try to explain their ridiculous concepts too much, and sometimes they opt to keep the audience completely in the dark, but I thought Source Code did a good job of straddling the line between those two, and I think the story was better for it.

Wait...why is it cold...wherever he is?  Um...science?

I did have some major issues with this movie, though.  First and foremost, I found myself irritated by the repetitious nature of the story (in the first half, anyway).  Jake Gyllenhaal is no Bill Murray, and Source Code is definitely not Groundhog Day, so this movie needed something to keep the viewer interested in the rehashed scenes.  The intention is clearly for the mystery of the bomber to keep your attention, but it's pretty obvious from the start who the bomber is.  SPOILER-ish ALERT: I mean, we know that the bomber has plans that don't involve the train, so we're dealing with either a suicidal terrorist with excellent planning skills that dies on the train, or someone who leaves the train to better bomb Chicago.  If it was me, I would investigate the people leaving the train first.  But that's just me.  Since I solved the mystery on my own with about two seconds of thought, I was less than enthralled by the scene reduxes. 

Attempt 137: testing the effectiveness of rap battles in drawing out the terrorist

The second half of the film is much better, but there are some disturbing (and probably unintentional) repercussions that are left unaddressed.  DEFINITE SPOILER ALERT: So Colter is able to replace the consciousness of Sean with his own, right?  That only works because both men are, essentially dead.  But what happens when Colton changes reality?  Sean is now alive, but his consciousness appears to be gone.  Did Colton just steal the life of a totally nice guy?  Worse, did he do it with a smile?  What a dick!  And now, he will have to fake being Sean for the next fifty years, feigning recognition of friends and family and having to figure out how he's going to bluff his way through being a history teacher.  Seriously, what kind of a happy ending is that?  He even refers to it as "fate."  Jerk.  And then there are the paradoxes.  Is this an all-new "prime" reality, or is it an alternate one?  I would have really appreciated a little speculation on this subject in the script.  According to the the story's logic, Colton rewrote history in the prime timeline, but how can Colton's consciousness be invading Sean's noggin when it is also in his useless body at the Army base?  That seems problematic to me.  And then there is the logic of the terrorist.  I am willing to buy into a villain being dumb enough to explain his evil plan to the good guys before he has enacted said plan.  It happens all the time in comic books and movies.  I would have preferred for this villain to not be that dumb, but I understand the plot's need for that moronic behavior.  What I don't get is his cover plan.  He's planning to explode multiple trains in a jumble of fire and twisted metal, so his alibi is to SPOILER ALERT: leave his wallet on the train?  Really?!?  What are the chances of that being found?  And why does he care?  If he's writing manifestos, this is a person who wants a soap box opportunity, not somebody who will fade into the night.  It's not even like that is a rock-solid alibi, either.  If the police find it --- and that's a huge "if" --- it's not like he's off the hook for the bombings.  At best, he confuses the police for a little while...months and months later, as people poke through the rubble of a post-nuclear Chicago. 

Here's the funny thing, though: I would have been really impressed with Source Code if it had made just one or two small changes.  I wish Colter had to fight off Sean's personality from time to time; it would have added an extra layer to the story (perhaps the eight minute window is because that's how long Colter can stay in control?) and it would have given Colter a moral choice to make in the final act of the film.  Or, of course, the writer could have found a way around having the terrorist be pudding-up-the-nose stupid.  Either one would have gone a long way.  Still, this was a pretty cool science fiction idea that was executed well.  It was unfortunately written by the guy whose highest profile writing gigs before this were the third and fourth entries in the Species series.  Good direction and solid acting wasn't enough to make Source Code awesome, but even crappy writing doesn't make it bad.

Moon

Space.  Apparently, it gets lonely there.  In the tradition of lonely astronaut movies like Solaris and 2001: A Space Baby comes Moon, a movie that has Sam Rockwell on screen for the entire length of the picture.  And that's a good thing.  I just find it interesting that, of all the movie genres, science fiction has shown me the most "lonely guy" stories, where the entire film depends on one actor, because it's all about his character.  Heck, even the notoriously lonely Jeremiah Johnson had a larger cast than this movie.

Moon is set on --- you guessed it! --- the moon; specifically, it is set in a mining base on the dark side of the moon.  Shockingly, the dark side of the moon does not have fantastic laser shows or old people getting high.  What it has is a group of largely automated helium harvesters.  Despite the automation, a human is needed to monitor progress and fix anything that goes wrong; it's cheaper to keep the maintenance guy on the moon than to fly him out on a spaceship every time something goes wrong.  As such, the sole occupant of the base, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) has plenty to keep him occupied (like, say, naming his plants and building a scale model of his home town), but he is eager for his three-year assignment to end in two weeks.  The whole gig wouldn't be so bad if the base's communications devices ever worked; Sam gets infrequent video chat messages from his wife, Tess, but he is really incommunicado and out of step with everything happening on Earth.  Sam's only companion in the base is GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), a robotic assistant that has a soothing voice (Kevin Spacey), but is limited in its expressiveness.  To give you an idea, here are his emoticons:

I hate emoticons, so that would drive me absolutely nuts.  Of course, staying three years with only a robot for company might do that to me anyway.  One day, Sam notices a malfunction at one of the harvesting machines and goes out to inspect it.  Along the way, he hallucinates and sees an unfamiliar woman standing on the moon's surface.  Distracted, he crashes his little moon buggy and passes out.  Sam awakes back in the base, with GERTY telling him that he had an accident that he cannot remember.  After undergoing some basic tests to make sure his noodle is still working, life goes on as usual for Sam.  Except when he almost catches GERTY on a live video chat with the corporate office.  And, for some reason, GERTY won't let him out of the base to fix a faulty harvesting machine.  The man is only human (and bored), so Sam does some minor sabotage in the base to give GERTY reason to allow him out of the base.  Once out and about on the moon, Sam heads to the damaged harvester and finds a wrecked moon buggy, complete with a live (but injured) passenger.  But why does this passenger look exactly like Sam Bell?  Anyone?  GERTY?  Any guesses?

Thoughtful science fiction movies are not for everyone, I will admit, but I love when I can find a good one.  First-time director and co-writer Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie and owner of the middle name Zowie) does a great job developing a film full of isolation and low-level dread and still finding moments for humor and optimism.  Sam Rockwell does a decent job in the film's first act, but he gets a chance to really shine once both Sam Bells are awake and interacting onscreen.  This is definitely the best non-Van Damme movie (to be fair, nobody can beat the master) to feature the same actor playing dual roles that I can recall.  This is another instance of how good Sam Rockwell can be; he plays two different Sam Bells and is able to make them distinct characters.  That's pretty fantastic.  Rockwell has been one of my favorite actors for the past few years because any one of his roles could make him a household name, they're all that good, and this role is no different.

The film is slow paced, but the story is good.  The mystery of the Sam Bells is answered quickly and is what you probably already suspect, so you're not drawn in to a serious puzzle.  Instead, this is a film about the concept of identity.  That may make the film sound pretentious, but this concept is addressed subtly and through two characters going through very different emotions, despite being the same person.  You might notice many similarities to 2001, with regards to the set and character design.  While the parallels are too obvious to be coincidence, I'm not quite sure if this is supposed to be an homage to that film, or if this movie is just supposed to take place in the future, as we imagined it back in the 70s.  The only complaint I have for this movie is that I felt the plot was a little easy to predict.  That's not a terrible thing, since the plot is really secondary to the conceptual core, but it was a minor flaw in an otherwise great sci-fi film.