2011 thriller
Rating: 13/20
Plot: A dead soldier is used to stop a terror plot using an idea borrowed from Bill Murray.
“Source code is not time travel.”
Whoops! The “science” behind this fiction is explained, but I’m not sure I even wanted an effort there. It didn’t make sense to me anyway. Time folding and eight minute increments, and you wonder if any of it actually makes sense.
Is it entertaining? Yeah, it thrills. Like Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow, a lot of the fun is in the recurring imagery. You’ve got your one character who, at least after a while, is aware of what’s going on while the others are just going about their everyday business. Gyllenhaal’s character makes his mistakes, he gets closer and closer, and just as you suspect he would, he eventually solves the whole thing. The ride’s fun enough although the plot has its holes and nothing really feels all that new. I’d also argue that the ending kind of breaks the movie’s rules. There’s a twist and then another twist, and it was probably two twists too many.
I did really enjoy the beginning of this movie–lots of shots of Chicago, a duck that you’ll eventually get sick of seeing, and a cool score. It feels very classic, almost like something from a Hitchcock movie. Things only start to go downhill when there’s some crappy train exploding effects that they wind up showing multiple times.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t really like what Jake Gyllenhaal was doing. It’s another interesting movie; the guy seems to do those exclusively. I do really like that Vera Farmiga who, if you look at her from the right angles, looks a little like his sister.
This brushes up against the moral issues with something like this, but it just doesn’t cover enough ground. At the same time, it dabbles too much in sentimentality with a father/son subplot and some unnecessary romance. And there’s just something about that happy Hollywood ending that rubbed me the wrong way.
Lots of Dunkin’ Donuts in this movie, by the way.
This write-up is even worse than my normal ones. I’m sorry about that.
