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SOURCE CODE
In addition to being immensely talented and drop dead gorgeous, Jake Gyllenhaal has proven to be one of our most fearless and courageous actors, taking on complex characters in life-altering situations and accepting the reluctant hero position that the character has been thrown into or accepting roles that might be considered career killers...he took on the role of Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain when other actors, Mark Wahlberg among them, didn't have the guts to and continues on a career path that could make him the new Millenium Harrison Ford with his performance in a 2011 sci-fi thriller Source Code.
Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier who wakes up and finds himself inside the body of a man named Sean Ventrice who is on a Chicago commuter train flirting with a woman named Christina (Michelle Monaghan). It is revealed that Stevens is actually part of a special government experiment and he has been placed on this train to prevent it from being blown up and he only has eight minutes to complete the mission. When he is initially unable to stop the explosion, he is sent back to the train repeated times until the mission is completed with the same eight minute window, but with a little more information that he had during the previous attempt.
Director Duncan Jones, whose previous assignment was directing Sam Rockwell in Moon, has taken on an ambitious and detail-oriented story that requires the recreation of a series of onscreen events multiple times with pinpoint accuracy in order for the story to make sense, but the viewer doesn't realize this as we watch this man board this commuter train and have various seemingly inconsequential encounters with other passengers, and suddenly minor details become more and more important as the story progresses. It is important that as this series of events are recreated, similar to what happens to Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, that everything happens exactly as it did the first time when we weren't really paying attention, so I actually found myself rewinding to document this and Jones nailed it.
Jones and screenwriter Ben Ripley have mounted a riveting story that offers what appears to be red herrings to throw the viewer off, like another Gyllenhaal film Enemy, but unlike that film, what appears to be red herrings are anything but...everything onscreen here is pertinent to the story. This story demands and requires complete attention but it is definitely rewarded.
Gyllenhaal is wonderful as the reluctant hero who accepts his position and eventually moves above and beyond the call of duty. There are also a pair of solid supporting performances from Vera Farmiga and the amazing Jeffrey Wright as the military personnel manipulating Colter's fate and, oh, that's Scott Bakula as the voice of Colter's father. The film also has some first rate editing and visual effects. This is a solid little mystery thriller that is not only deliciously entertaining but surprisingly economical.
In addition to being immensely talented and drop dead gorgeous, Jake Gyllenhaal has proven to be one of our most fearless and courageous actors, taking on complex characters in life-altering situations and accepting the reluctant hero position that the character has been thrown into or accepting roles that might be considered career killers...he took on the role of Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain when other actors, Mark Wahlberg among them, didn't have the guts to and continues on a career path that could make him the new Millenium Harrison Ford with his performance in a 2011 sci-fi thriller Source Code.
Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a soldier who wakes up and finds himself inside the body of a man named Sean Ventrice who is on a Chicago commuter train flirting with a woman named Christina (Michelle Monaghan). It is revealed that Stevens is actually part of a special government experiment and he has been placed on this train to prevent it from being blown up and he only has eight minutes to complete the mission. When he is initially unable to stop the explosion, he is sent back to the train repeated times until the mission is completed with the same eight minute window, but with a little more information that he had during the previous attempt.
Director Duncan Jones, whose previous assignment was directing Sam Rockwell in Moon, has taken on an ambitious and detail-oriented story that requires the recreation of a series of onscreen events multiple times with pinpoint accuracy in order for the story to make sense, but the viewer doesn't realize this as we watch this man board this commuter train and have various seemingly inconsequential encounters with other passengers, and suddenly minor details become more and more important as the story progresses. It is important that as this series of events are recreated, similar to what happens to Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, that everything happens exactly as it did the first time when we weren't really paying attention, so I actually found myself rewinding to document this and Jones nailed it.
Jones and screenwriter Ben Ripley have mounted a riveting story that offers what appears to be red herrings to throw the viewer off, like another Gyllenhaal film Enemy, but unlike that film, what appears to be red herrings are anything but...everything onscreen here is pertinent to the story. This story demands and requires complete attention but it is definitely rewarded.
Gyllenhaal is wonderful as the reluctant hero who accepts his position and eventually moves above and beyond the call of duty. There are also a pair of solid supporting performances from Vera Farmiga and the amazing Jeffrey Wright as the military personnel manipulating Colter's fate and, oh, that's Scott Bakula as the voice of Colter's father. The film also has some first rate editing and visual effects. This is a solid little mystery thriller that is not only deliciously entertaining but surprisingly economical.