Posts tagged Source Code

“Expect a Tweak”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

SOURCE CODE is a science-fiction, action-thriller version of the 1993 GROUNDHOG DAY, except each return to the past lasts only eight minutes apiece.

And yet it is still worth watching, especially for the work of star Jake Gyllenhaal and director Duncan Jones, who previously directed the excellent 2009 MOON.

However, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief at least nine times, if my count of the trips back in time are accurate.

And we are told that these events are not time travel; they are time reassignment. Also, the program that is called “Source Code” and allows these events to take place is not designed to alter the past. It is designed to affect the future.

It all begins when Capt. Colter Stevens wakes up one morning on a commuter train to Chicago. A woman sitting across from him says, “I took your advice. It was good advice. Thank you.”

And yet Stevens doesn’t know where he is, what is happening, or who this woman is, whose name is Christina.

Eight minutes later a bomb on the train explodes and everyone on it is killed.

Then Stevens finds himself in a crashed helicopter in Afghanistan, and a woman is talking to him over a video screen. She is Capt. Goodwin, and she tells Stevens that he is part of a mission designed to prevent that bomb explosion.

Eight minutes before the explosion, Stevens’ mind can be inserted into the body of another man on that train, and his mission is to find the bomb, find the bomber, and report the results.

Nice work if he can do it, especially in only eight minutes, but each time he goes back, he knows a little bit more which will allow him to find the bomb, find the bomber, and complete the mission.

We learn that Stevens is a born hero and saving people is what he does best, but he is also told by Capt. Goodwin that he can’t save the people on the train, because they are already dead.

This causes conflict in Stevens, because he becomes more and more fond of Christina each time he meets her for the first time.

However, the ending is all wrong and expect some changes to it when the DVD comes out.

SOURCE CODE is entertaining, but expect a tweak.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”