Source Code
Helicopter pilot Colter Stevens wakes up in a train on the way to Chicago with no clue how he got there and the last thing he remembers is being on a mission in Afhanistan. Eight minutes later, the train explodes and he wakes up in some kind of pod where he’s told by some military woman that he’s inside the “Source Code”, a project that allows people to go into some sort of alternate reality and relive the last eight minutes of a person’s life. His mission is to constantly go back to find out who blew up the train before that same terrorist detonates a dirty bomb in downtown Chicago…
Sound and Vision:
The image is nice, but definitely not perfect. Skin tones aren’t always perfect, and the panoramic views of Chicago clearly suffer from aliasing.
As you can imagine with an action thriller, the sound has quite some pounding but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for subtleties here. The sound of a can opening, a splash of a drink on a shoe, a train ticket being pricked, … the detail is very nice. Source Code’s transfer on a technical level is very good.
Extras:
– Access: Source Code
– Cast Insights
– Focal Points
A picture-in-picture track, some interviews and a short documentary.
Conclusion:
Ever since Groundhog Day, we’ve seen movies and series experiment with the concept of going back in time and reliving the same moments over and over again. Mostly, the result of these aren’t all too great but Source Code luckily does things a bit better. The viewer is as thrown off as the lead character and we don’t really get to know what’s going on in reality until about halfway, when the plot twist starts to emerge. That’s when you figure out what is going on and then you’ve still got 30 minutes to go with a predictable (and very Hollywood) ending as result.
All in all, Source Code is a decent action thriller with some sci-fi elements in it, but Duncan Jones’ previous movie (Moon) was better, even if it had a smaller budget. Jones does do one thing very right: he lets the story do its work instead of just trying to blow us away with special effects and for that we applaud him
6.0