Source Code

Source Code 

PG-13
93 minutes
Director: Duncan Jones
Writer: Ben Ripley
Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright

“Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.”
 
-W.H. Auden

Coulter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) is an American Army pilot, stationed in Afghanistan. He mysteriously appears aboard a Chicago commuter train. Not as Coulter Stevens, but in the body of a Chicago teacher.  He has no recollection of how he got there. Eight minutes later, the train blows up, killing all those aboard. He wakes up disoriented, finding himself strapped in an isolation chamber. Coulter is the guinea pig of a scientific experiment: a sick, perverse experiment, of quantum proportions. 

He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better… finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.

These words are so aptly and eloquently stated, but they are not mine. They are from the TV series, Quantum Leap (Opening Monologue, Season 3). In this film, Coulter Stevens needs to 'stop' a bomb from killing the passengers on a train. Unlike Quantum Leap, you can't alter events of the past. So his real mission becomes one of intelligence gathering. The man who perpetrated the first attack, has further plans to annihilate the entire city of Chicago (I can't figure out why they know this for a fact).

But doesn’t this just raise a long series of questions?

                
1. What if you found a portal to a parallel universe?

2. What if you could slide into a thousand different worlds where it’s the same year, and you’re the same person but everything else is different?

3. And what if you can’t find your way home?

                   -Sliders, Opening Theme (Seasons 3-5)

So this movie isn’t wholly original. In all fairness, no one has ever combined the plots of Quantum Leap and Sliders. It’s like a soft-serve, chocolate-vanilla ice cream. Not the kind you would get Dairy Queen, but the kind found in a Chinese buffet: neither flavor is particularly enjoyable. The ice cream usually melts too quickly. Once you add sprinkles, chocolate syrup, m&ms, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry; you are left with something vaguely palatable. 

Most of the film is merely entertaining, but I was just blown away by the ending: it prevented the entire movie from becoming a train wreck. As a whole, the film was thoroughly enjoyable. I recommend watching this film once, and only once, at a movie theater.

To quote the Quad City DJs:

...get your next of kin

your sister and your friend

pack it up now

choo choo

ride on this

choo choo

Final Verdict: 82 out of 100.