Source Code

He’s gone wran­gling in Wyoming, spear­head­ed a Sau­di Desert Storm, tooth­combed 1960s San Fran­cis­co and lev­elled up in ancient Per­sia. Now, Jake Gyl­len­haal is trapped.

Just as Sam Rock­well played a lone pro­tag­o­nist on an unen­vi­able mis­sion in Dun­can Jones’ slow-burn­ing 2009 space odd­i­ty, Moon, so Gyl­len­haal finds him­self swim­ming against the unre­lent­ing tide of fate as Uncle Sam-lov­ing Cap­tain Colter Stevens in the British director’s urgent sopho­more feature.

The occa­sion­al stray shard of exis­ten­tial­ism is all that is allowed to pen­e­trate Source Code’s heav­i­ly lac­quered out­er shell, but you get the sense that Jones is keen to empha­sise a kin­ship between his two for­sak­en male leads. As Stevens takes on anoth­er man’s iden­ti­ty in the last eight min­utes of his life in order to track down and neu­tralise a ter­ror­ist en route to Chica­go – where an immi­nent sec­ond attack is set to wipe the city off the map – Jones takes us deep with­in the recess­es of the human psy­che. Here Stevens’ search for big answers is greet­ed by hard truths and the unavoid­able accep­tance that his mis­sion is big­ger than one man.

Every minor detail in the ​‘sim­u­lat­ed’ world he now inhab­its (aka ​‘the Source Code’) is of major sig­nif­i­cance, but with Colter ask­ing the ques­tions – ​“why eight min­utes?” – we can’t help but allow our­selves to be sucked into his shoes. While he’s stuck on repeat, skip­ping between con­scious and pseu­do-con­scious states like a dusty LP, we too begin to see things dif­fer­ent­ly. As the clock ticks and clues come and go, this com­muter wag­on becomes haunt­ing in its arbi­trari­ness; the dev­as­ta­tion to come echoed only the stress-torn face of its clued-in guardian.

Gyllenhaal’s dra­mat­ic prowess is once again impe­ri­ous, but his doe-eyed boy­ish­ness gives him a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that is absolute­ly cru­cial in estab­lish­ing our ini­tial doubt over his character’s for­ti­tude in the face of a predica­ment most would strug­gle to wrap their head around. Indeed, he is not just believ­able as a sol­dier, but as a son. Human and fallible.

On this note, while frag­ments of strained pater­nal bonds will come togeth­er to form a pic­ture of our hero’s past, it is the two women in his inad­ver­tent­ly adopt­ed life that will deter­mine his des­tiny. Michelle Mon­aghan is well cast as the big-heart­ed love inter­est, but it is Vera Farmi­ga as Stevens’ real-world liai­son who forms the more inti­mate con­nec­tion. As Stevens is grad­u­al­ly awok­en from his state of denial, the com­pas­sion forged in this com­plex rela­tion­ship imbues Source Code with some­thing that pre­vi­ous­ly set Jones’ debut apart from oth­er flash­bang block­busters – soul.

Where Moon was made as a retort to the tooth­less dis­pos­abil­i­ty of main­stream cin­e­ma, Source Code is no more con­spic­u­ous about its influ­ences. So while com­par­isons to Unstop­pable and Ground­hog Day are inevitable (you’ll be half expect­ing the on-board announc­er to exclaim, ​‘Please mind the gap, it’s a doozy!’), Hitch­cock and Scott (Rid­ley – ear­ly, not recent) are giv­en the biggest nods.

Strik­ing a bal­ance between sub­stance and spec­ta­cle was always going to be Jones’ biggest chal­lenge here, but it’s one that he has risen to admirably, even if the sparks of orig­i­nal­i­ty and staunch prag­ma­tism that rock­et­ed Moon up Top 10 lists two years ago have been notice­ably dulled. That Source Code is not the van­i­ty project it might have been will be greet­ed with a col­lec­tive sigh of relief from Jones’ fan base. But audi­ences are fick­le. The Moon bub­ble has long since popped, and Jones had lit­tle option but to hit the ground running.

All things con­sid­ered, what’s tru­ly refresh­ing is that there’s noth­ing osten­ta­tious in Source Code’s scope or exe­cu­tion – it’s not water­tight, but it’s fun, eco­nom­i­cal and, most impor­tant­ly, nev­er dull. And while the inevitable hap­py end­ing shows that Jones is still some way off earn­ing com­plete cre­ative auton­o­my on a pro­duc­tion of this scale, a last gasp bomb­shell sug­gests that he’s at least got the cojones to leave his mark where it matters.

Jones may have passed his first real Hol­ly­wood test with mer­it, but he has wise­ly avoid­ed try­ing to make this his call­ing card movie. Here’s bet­ting he’ll be back with some­thing more per­son­al and pro­found in 2012.