“Source Code” – Justifying the Means

“Source Code”, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Colter Stevens, was released on DVD this week. It appeared to have all the components I would enjoy in a movie – tension, explosives and the guy in the white hat riding in to save the day. 

This movie had all those things, and yet there were enough twists to make me reconsider whether this was really a “good guy/bad guy” kind of movie. You know the phrase, “the end justifies the means?”  I’m still deciding if that’s the case in this movie, as the government does it’s Big Brother best to manipulate situations and people for its own benefit. 

The movie opens with a lot of sweeping city views. Wait a minute – that’s Chicago! This movie is set here – and that makes the plot just a little bit more insidious. There’s a bomb on a commuter train, and the government has found a way for a soldier (Jake Gyllenhaal) to inhabit the brain of one of the victims for the last eight minutes of his life. 

He has eight minutes to find the bomb, and, more importantly, the bomber. It seems the bomber not only blows up this train, but has a dirty bomb hidden somewhere that will take out most of Chicago as well. The mission is to find the bomber and discover the location of the dirty bomb. It seems like a noble cause, right? Especially when the camera shoots back to the clogged highways leading out of Chicago after the terror alert is set to high, and I think about my son and my friends that live there. It’s hard not to be emotionally involved in the positive outcome of this fictional movie. 

The science fiction aspect of this movie is pretty big – there’s a lot of “Inception” copycat ideas floating around. You have to suspend disbelief to understand that a soldier can be taken back again and again and inhabit the brain of a victim in the last eight minutes of his life. It’s jarring to watch the inevitable explosion happen multiple times, while the clock ticks down those last seconds. After the third time back to those last eight minutes, I thought the movie was beginning to feel monotonous. That fear was short lived as we begin to discover the true cost of this experiment. 

Vera Farmiga plays the captain in the control room of this “source code” experiment. She is firm in the mission and yet plays the part well enough to let her own moral code ambiguities shimmer across her face. There’s more victims here than the people on that train. There’s Colter’s dad, who was told his son died overseas in a mission and has no idea the true status of his son. There’s Colter, who is ruthlessly yanked back again and again to relive that explosion, seemingly without his conscious approval. Colter is held in this tiny box between missions that subtly demonstrates his comfort isn’t an issue for this team. And even the safety of the people on the train are called in to question when it becomes clear that the government is more interested in the dirty bomb location, and the train victims are truly just collateral damage.   

I would recommend this movie, especially for the last 10 minutes, which really takes your credibility for a ride. It also left me thinking about those 10 minutes again and again, and wondering if we should have the ability to go back in time, if only for a few minutes, and change fate. It also left me pondering time lines, dimensions, and what really comprises human life. This movie, and the morality questions therein, are ripe for debate. Look me up if you see it.