What
would you do with your life if you knew that you would only have eight minutes
left to live? What would happen if you could go back in time and fix your
problems? What if the life you knew was fake and that you've found the "creator"
of the world? These are some of the questions offered in the philosophical,
action thriller movie by Duncan Jones. At first, Duncan Jones seemed to make a
pretty good indie movie on the moon. He studied Philosophy in college and decided
to apply his learning into the two movies he's made.
The
movie starts out with a normal everyday situation with Colter Stevens as a
passenger of a train that's about to go off by a hidden bomb. However, the
conflict is, where is the bomb, the detonator, and who is the bomb maker or the
one setting off the bomb? It turns out that Stevens was in a program called
"Source Code." The program works with the last eight minute memory of
a passenger, Sean Fentress, on the train and is replaced with Stevens. He could
do anything in the span of those eight minutes, but must oblige to Quantum
Physics, such as, he has to die in some way. Through this, he interrogates
people, he finds a phone on the bomb and needs to finds the caller. He looks
for suspicious people and looking for a weapon. Each of these scenarios offer
us something new and it advances the story. All the while, Stevens finds out
that he was in a crash and he wants to find the truth of his own existence.
It's
sad that it's only a program. If life was a program, then what's the point of
living? This was what Stevens was going through. He could only tamper with the
past in order to save the future. The past, however, is all gone. The events
could not be changed. it could be repeated over and over again, but it cannot change.
In the movie, Stevens falls for a woman passenger, Christina, and he vows to
actually save her, even though she's already dead. It's also sad to believe
that when you realize that the environment you live in doesn't exist and is
only concocted by higher beings, then you would have to rethink at the point
and purpose of living. This movie is interesting because Stevens can reason
with the people from Source Code. He tries to reason with them, and even bargains
for an ultimatum.
This
movie is a fantasy movie. Basically, what I'm saying is that it's a movie that
we wish we could be a part of. In the movie, Groundhog Day, the main character has to relive the same day over
and over again. Because of this, he takes advantage of it, he suffers, and he
changes. This is what also happens in Source
Code. Stevens would make mistakes and have the opportunity to learn from
them and fix them. He has the opportunity to be a hero of a story that doesn't
really matter. He had the ability to listen to his parents as they heard the
news of his death. The ending, especially was what truly made it a good fantasy
piece. (Spoiler) In the end, he requested to die after he does one final
mission. In this last simulation, he stops the bomb, stops the bomb maker, and
he gets the girl. As the plug was pulled, his life ends and pauses on a kiss. A
single moment stuck in time was what made it touching.
The
Cloud Gate, the sculpture shown at the end of the film, represents the infinite
possibilities of you seeing your reflection. The movie emphasizes on the
infinite possibilities of an alternative universes that Stevens has to go
through. It also represents the unpredictability of the film. In this movie,
there are many Red Herrings, and dead ends.
Alfred
Hitchcock said that suspense is not about a bomb blowing up from underneath a
table. Suspense is the fact that you know that there's a bomb under the table
and you don't know when it's going to go off. In this movie, I could care less
about the style of the explosion and focus on the meaning. Nowadays, visual
directors focus on the fireworks rather than why they're shooting them in the
sky. In this movie, the way suspense is generated is by the eight minute
countdown to the bomb, disarming the bomb, or waiting for the inevitable. The
movie is not much of an action movie, nor is it a movie about a bomb that's
about to blow up. It's more of a character's journey towards finding out the
truth externally, as well as internally.
The
trailer does no justice to this movie at all. It shows "Source Code"
as a cheap thriller that looked recycled. The movie didn't have much interest
to the public audience because it was, quote on quote, original. I highly
recommend this movie. Get some fresh air, and watch something that's original.
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