Source Code

I watched this movie today; initially with some skepticism but I eventually warmed up to it.  It's a pretty good thriller .  Nothing spectacular, but the idea is relatively original with a decent plot.  

The premise is that Captain Colter Stevens is placed into the body of a victim on a train bombing that occured sometime earlier.  His mission is to figure out where the bomb is located and the identity of the bomber so that bombings in reality can be stopped before they happen.  The mechanism that allows him to access this "memory", called the "Source Code" which works by supposedly recreating a moment from the past using a persons  brain (which conveniently functions a little after death) but can only do so for 8 minutes.  This is explained in the movie by saying that it's a little like looking at the last portion of a security camera, but only 8 minutes at a time.  They also compare it to something like a clock, where they can turn the hand back as many times as they want.  

When the movie first starts, he freaks out, not knowing who he is when suddenly the train he's on blows up.  He get's briefed on his mission and he starts to figure out that he's actually dead.  At least sort of.  And that's where the movie starts to turn into a "watthefack?" kind of movie (Inception hur hur).  Ok, so he's in the "source code".  Is that like the "matrix" or something? And what's up with him being technically dead?  That's a little weird.  Another thing is, how could anybody possibly recreate the environment in source code so well that you can predict how people will talk, think, and react to the point that you're still not playing God?  I don't know.  Seeing the same guy die over and over again while also being shown the same image of a duck flying serenely over a crystal clear stream will do that to you.  


After so many tries, trials, and errors, he finds out that the killer's a guy named Derek Frost.  Well I totally didn't expect that guy. I actually suspected the Arab (I'm a horrible person) and the douchebag with the laptop.  Turns out he was a psycho who actually managed to build a nuclear device in his white van (what a cliche').  


During the movie, Colter manages to disarm the bomb after only 2 tries.  That's another thing that peeved me.   Why did a guy make a bomb that was so easy to disarm (unplug two cellphones) when he was skilled enough to build a nuclear bomb?  No wire cutting?  That's blasphemy.  And how did he get it on the train unnoticed in the first place (much less the ceiling vent)?  That thing must have weighed at least 50 pounds.  

Now after he catches the bad guy, I thought that was it.  I was pretty sure that he was working solo.  But then I realized that Colter's advisor guy; the man who invented the "source code", is also a villain.  He's so caught up in the success of his experiment that he's willing to use Colter's life as a tool to further his own methods even though he promised that he would allow him to die after a successful mission.  It saves millions of lives, but at what cost?  Reminds me of people like Magneto and Megatron.  Surprise; they're both villains.  

(He wants to protect mutants like him...by killing humans.)

Despite already catching the bad guy, Colter wants to play hero again but this time with him saving everybody and him being unplugged while in the "source code".  I kept thinking "What's the point?  You're already dead and so is everybody else on the train."  He saves them all and the plug is pulled while he kisses the woman that sat across him on the train throughout the movie which freezes everything that happens at that moment in the reality.  But then it begins again as if they were on momentary pause.  That's not supposed to happen (at least according to the movie).  It was only supposed to last 8 minutes.  So now Colter gets to live a new life as some teacher in some alternate universe?  That's pretty crazy considering that he doesn't even recognize his own face (since it's not his).  

I'm very familiar with the multiverse.  It shows up in the comics that I read all the time.  Spiderman, Captain America, Batman, Justice League, Superman, The Flash, Deadpool... Speaking of Deadpool; ever read Deadpool Corps?  Nevermind.  

(They are all the same guy but in different universes.)

So anyway, I couldn't help but compare this movie to Groundhog Day, where the guy from Ghostbusters plays a sardonic news reporter who fails to see the importance of the aforementioned holiday.  He's cursed to repeat the day until he "get's it right".  However, I thought that aside from that, this movie was completely different.  Though it does have it's sparse funny dialogue, it is not a comedy.  It served it's purpose, and it served it well.  Some parts of the movie were so intense, I had my underwear riding up my ass.  And it also had me thinking one of those moral questions yet again.  Is it okay to screw one guy so you can save the lives of others, no matter how many?  Do the ends really justify the means?