Source Code

“Source Code,” that movie with the terrible name, by the director who made one of the best movies of 2009. When I saw “Moon” a few years ago it blew me away (check out my review if you don’t believe me). It was so incredible to watch I don’t know if it can be topped. So when I heard about “Source Code” I was obviously excited to see it. And then I saw it.

“Source Code,” or as like to call it “Inception for Dummies” is a good enough movie. In fact I’m almost certain it’s better than I am giving it credit for. It is probably the victim of what I call Expectation Theory. That’s where you expect something to be good so you judge it more harshly or if you expect something to be bad you give it the benefit of the doubt. So the fact that I was expecting this film to be so great worked against it because it was only okay. Jake Gyllenhaal plays an army captain who is trapped in a machine that sends his brain waves back in time to a specific event so that he can retrieve information. Gyllenhaal does a pretty good job actually. And the structure of the story is great. The way in which the director is able to tell a complex story in such a simple way is genius. And really that should be the goal of every movie, simplicity. So in that way it really works on all levels.

SPOILER ALERT: I am about to tell you the whole ending!!!! Here’s the reason I probably didn’t like it as much as I should have. In the end you find out that even though Gyllenhaal shouldn’t have been able to alter the past, he has. In such a way that he creates two parallel timelines. One in which he is dead and another in which he is alive in the body of another man while simultaneously alive in the machine. This really makes no sense and in fact retroactively ruins the rest of the movie for me. But whatever, as long as you don’t give a shit about some minor plot hole that happens at the end then this is a pretty good movie. And after you watch this go watch “12 Monkeys” and then tell me I’m wrong.