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Movie Review: Source Code

Posted By Claire on September 22, 2011

This is a disappointing film. Science-fiction films that play with concepts of time, reality, and alternate and/or parallel universes are on the rise, but The Adjustment Bureau, which came out just prior to Source Code, was a much better-developed film that falls into this category. Source Code has three strands: Colter Stevens’ (Jake Gylenhaal) attempts to avert a tragedy only he can stop; his interactions with female train passenger Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan); and the morality and reasoning behind the quasi-military operation which he has been conscripted into, as seen through two military officers.

Unfortunately, the film is neither long enough nor complex enough to be able to balance these three strands, so all three suffer. The last of these, which is ultimately the most interesting, comes to the forefront near the end of the film, but not soon enough to save a faltering plot. Colter’s attempts to avert the bombing of the train he’s on, and heis quick-lit romance with Christina, are both hindered by the same thing: Colter’s 8-minute window before time re-starts. 8 minutes is not enough time for the film to create any kind of development, so there’s no depth to his romance with Christina and little to no tension in his attempts to find the bomb and stop the bomber (who incidentally, is also given no development). Michelle Monaghan does her best with a character who is essentially a blob, and quietly glows, but it is not enough.

The Adjustment Bureau and Source Code both suffer from the same thing: an inability to take an interesting concept to its fullest explorative potential. Both are unwilling to play with the rules of the very world they’ve set up (something Inception did so well). It’s not enough to simply set up an interesting concept and a set of rules about it and to then operate within those parameters. New twists must be added, the stakes raised above the film’s own initial plot-lines. The Adjustment Bureau does a fine job of creating stakes we care about and of maintaining the tension, but it fails to delve into or grapple with the system of reality that it creates – as if the creators were afraid that, in doing so, they would either lose control of the world they’d created, or that they’d simply come up dry and realize that there was nothing beyond the minimal explanations they’d offered.

The Adjustment Bureau, however, at least committed fully to its romance, which was, for better or worse (mostly better), the heart of the film. The romance was well-written and given plenty of screen-time and Emily Blunt and Matt Damon had fantastic chemistry. This was the salvation of the film, and the source of the film’s tension and emotional appeal. Source Code has no such saving element – the romance is marginalized and offered in short 8-minute bursts which endlessly re-start, just as the other plot elements are. I have no hesitation in saying that this film was downright dull and I was glad when it was over. In order to succeed, Source Code would have had to have absolutely brilliant dialogue and action comprising each 8-minute segment (in a way it’s like making a short film, and every moment in a short must be worth it), or it would have had to jettison one of its three elements (terrorist plot, romance, and morality of a particular scientific experiment) in order to fully develop the other two. Source Code is a failure of execution.