Friday, April 8, 2011

Source Code

Released Year: 2011
Directed by Duncan Jones

Casted by:
Jake Gyllenhaal as Captain Colter Stevens
Michelle Monaghan as Christina Warren
Vera Farmiga as Captain Colleen Goodwin
Jeffrey Wright as Dr. Rutledge
Michael Arden as Derek Frost
Story:
Captain Colter Stevens is a decorated army helicopter pilot whose last memory is of his recent mission in Afghanistan, flying with his team while taking on enemy gunfire. He awakens on a train headed for Chicago with no memory of how he arrived there. His reflection is of a different man and his wallet says his name is Sean Fentress. Sitting across from him is a woman named Christina Warren who seems to know him as Fentress. But before he can understand what is happening, a bomb goes off and destroys the train.

Stevens then awakens inside a chamber, where he is greeted through a computer screen by Capt. Colleen Goodwin, an Air Force officer who tells Stevens that he is inside the Source Code, a program that allows him to take over someone's body in his or her last eight minutes of life. Earlier that day, a bomb exploded and destroyed a train headed into Chicago, the train that Stevens awoke on. Stevens' mission is to locate the bomb, discover who built it, and report back to Goodwin before the bomber can detonate a second larger bomb, a dirty nuclear device, in downtown Chicago which could cause the deaths of millions of people.

Stevens is sent back to the train, where he locates the bomb in the ventilation shaft above the bathroom. The bomb explodes again, activated by a cell phone detonator. After the bomb goes off, Stevens sees blurred images of a round highly polished artistic structure in a park-like setting. Stevens reawakens in the chamber, where Goodwin and the Source Code's creator, Dr. Rutledge, tell him that the Source Code is not a simulation, but a visit into the past in the form of an alternative reality. Stevens can perform different actions each time and learn from those actions. He's told that he cannot truly alter the past to save Christina or any of the other passengers. But hopefully the intel he gathers can be used to alter the future and prevent a future attack.

Confused and frustrated, Stevens wonders how he got assigned to this project if it felt like just yesterday he was on mission in Afghanistan. He suspects that Goodwin is not telling him the whole truth when she says that he has been with the Source Code project for two months. Stevens catches a glimpse of Goodwin's uniform insignia during one debriefing, and discovers where Goodwin and Rutledge are assigned. Using a cellphone, he eventually discovers that he supposedly died in the war two months ago and that his injured body was apparently appropriated by the Air Force and used by Rutledge to enter the Source Code. He was chosen because his physical attributes are a close match to Sean Fentress, and his particular injuries allow him to be connected to the Source Code system, due to half of his brain still being "active".

Stevens is sent back several more times. Each time he learns more, and each time the bomb goes off he sees the blurred images of a round highly polished structure, and is then returned to the chamber. During one debriefing Stevens is made to hear an emotional audio statement from his father concerning his death. Stevens resolves to complete his mission, now with the personal goal of saving Christina and the people on the train if at all possible. On one trip he retrieves a gun from the conductor's compartment on the train and eventually discovers that the bomber is an American extremist named Derek Frost. Stevens confronts Frost and is able to inform Goodwin before Frost activates the second bomb. Authorities are then able to apprehend Frost and save Chicago. However, the train is still destroyed by this first bomb and Christina is still dead.

Earlier, Stevens had asked Goodwin and Rutledge to let him die after the mission is completed, and Rutledge agreed to that. But now that the mission is over, Rutledge decides that Stevens is too valuable to the Source Code project and, unknown to Stevens, Rutledge orders Stevens' memory wiped/erased instead. But Stevens persuades Goodwin to send him in one more time and give him one last chance to avert the train disaster before they pull the plug on him.

With the information he has uncovered from previous sorties, Stevens is able to defuse the bomb and capture Frost before he can destroy the train. Stevens then sends an email to Goodwin, and later makes a phone call to hear his father's heartfelt voice one last time, telling his father that he was Sean Fentress, a soldier that served with his son and was there when his son died. Frost is arrested by the police and the people on the train are saved. Stevens and Christina kiss in the last seconds before the plug is to be pulled at the eight-minute mark, but, to his surprise, he does not return to the chamber. Instead, his mind remains in Sean Fentress' body (what happens to the real Sean Fentress is unresolved).

Stevens - now in Fentress's body - leaves the train with Christina. While walking together in Millennium Park in Chicago, they come to the Cloud Gate sculpture which turns out to be the structure Stevens had seen blurred images of every time he returned back to the chamber from a mission.

Now in an alternate timeline, back at Nellis Air Base, Goodwin receives the email sent by Stevens while he was on the train. The message details the averted train crisis, and outlines that it was Stevens and Goodwin and the Source Code project that averted the train disaster - however because the train disaster was averted Stevens was never sent to the train. Goodwin starts to tell Rutledge about the email, but in the process she hears about the bomber that got caught earlier that day and the averted train disaster and that if the bomber had set off a bomb it would have been a good opportunity to try the Source Code. Goodwin then decides to hold off telling Rutledge about the email.
L² Scored: 5/10

L² Comment:
Though i love Gyllenhaal, Farmiga & Monaghan, but i feel this movie is kinda weird. Maybe this kind of sci-fic movie is not my type. There's not much connection between these few characters and i dont like it. Maybe the novel of Ben Ripley is good, but not necessary in the movie. Too bad

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