In’ Source Code’, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, an American pilot who fought in Afghanistan and mysteriously awakens in a commuter train in someone else’s body. He learns he’s part of an experimental government project that enables the 8 last minutes of someone’s consciousness to be relived; the train was destroyed by a terrorist bomb earlier in the day and he has to relive the last minutes of his assumed identity again and again until he has identified the bomber.

This is a well-crafted techno-thriller that is quite gripping to watch in parts. The film starts by plunging the viewer straight into the deep end of the story without any exposition – Colter awakens with a jolt on the train with no idea who or where he is - a very effective way of capturing the Kafkaesque confusion of the hero. The two intertwined narrative threads are Colter’s repeated attempts to find the identity of the bomber, and his attempts to understand his own strange circumstances; each time the train is destroyed he awakens in a capsule and interacts over a monitor with female solider Goodwin, a member of the program. Much of the movie involves him accosting suspicious passengers and trying to wring information out of Goodwin. There’s also a love interest in the form of cute chick Christa – can Colter save her?

The science fiction combines the ideas of virtual reality, mind uploading and quantum mechanics. The later parts of the film are a stretch, but I think it can all hang together if the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics is adopted, where multiple parallel realities (representing different forks in the road people could have taken in their lives) coexist and are all equally real. Dr Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) is convincing as the amoral Spock-like genius behind the program. The themes of fate versus free-will and how to live life in the face of adversity are explored (the romance has shades of ‘Groundhog Day’ too).

The film is too predictable for my tastes – I guessed Colter’s real situation quite quickly, and others have pointed out that the bomber is quite easy to identify given the information that he is planning another terrorist attack on the same day. But it’s undeniably entertaining and well-acted. Colter is a character we can identify with – his desperate hustling to complete his mission and deal with his own situation is perfectly captured by Jake Gyllenhaal, we feel the hero could be us, just an average Joe trying to deal with what the world throws at us- the viewer is invested in what happens next.

The most powerful piece of the movie is when Colter’s mission is completed and he persuades Goodwin to send him back one last time to try to change history – the results of his attempt to ‘make every second count’ is striking, unexpected and satisfying. The rest of the film is certainly entertaining, but let down by its predictably. Overall, the film is not brilliant, but is better than average, and constitutes good solid sci-fi fare.

My rating: 7.5/10