FOLIO
by Amadeus
I was really excited to see Source Code. Not because it stars one of Hollywood’s rising superstars, Jake Gyllenhaal, but because it was directed by a VERY promising superstar director, Duncan Jones.
You may not know the name Duncan Jones, but burn it into your brain!!! He’s the son of Rock/Pop legend David Bowie (David Robert Jones), and with two films under his belt, Duncan Jones is showing sings of pure genius. His first film was 2009’s SciFi drama Moon, starring Sam Rockwell. (Well worth checking out on DVD.)
The trailer for Source Code may lead you to think this is a poor man’s Inception, but that couldn’t be any further from the truth. It’s more like Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling meets Alfred Hitchcock. The musical score, provided by Chris Bacon (King Kong and The Dark Knight), even has a very “Hitchcock” feel to it, right from the get-go.
The movie opens as Capt. Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a train heading to Chicago. The woman sitting across from (Michelle Monaghan) him is calling him by another name, and in the middle of all the confusion, a bomb goes off ON the train. Capt. Stevens then wakes up in a sort of capsule/chamber. He’s informed through a video screen that he’s in a “program” that allows him to take over the body of a man, in the last 8 minutes of that man’s life. Capt. Stevens mission is to go back in the program and find out who planted and detonates the bomb.
The woman on the other side of the video monitor is played by Vera Farmiga, who you may remember from Up In The Air with George Clooney. She’s especially good in this film, and represents the compassion you’ll feel for the characters.
Okay, that’s all the plot you’re getting from me. I don’t wanna be accused of leaking any spoilers!!! But I will leak this… in my opinion, Source Code is a must see!! Especially if you’re already a fan of SciFi, or psychological thrillers.
Oh yeah, another name to watch is writer Ben Ripley. He’s written the straight-to-DVD movies Species III and Species: The Awakening, but try not to hold that against him. Source Code MORE than makes up for both those gems…
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