Single-Sentence Movie Reviews: Source Code

Good to hear, I was on the fence with this one. 🙂

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Yeah, I pretty much fucking loved it. I’m looking forward to a repeat viewing. So much was done well in that film, from the script right on down.

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My problem with “assuming you can get past the scientific handwaving necessary to make the plot work” is that I felt like the movie sells out its own premise in the last five-to-ten minutes or so. I’ll avoid enough detail to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but there’s a point where the hero has won as much of a victory as he can within the rules of the universe we’ve spent the last two hours (or whatever) watching, and if it ended on that, er, moving freeze-frame, I would’ve been really happy. Instead the movie keeps going, contradicting the sci-fi logic it already established for us, in a way that I haven’t been able to make any sense of, and the whole thing basically felt like “you thought we were taking our own premise seriously, but as it happens LoveMagic can conquer the rules of fake-physics!” The ultimate “happy ending” of it, though something movies do a lot, also bugs me, but it’s a less specific complaint.

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I disagree that it sells-out its concept. There are multiple lines by Jeffrey Wright’s character that establish the possibility of the ‘breaking of the rules’ that happens at the conclusion. (There’s a second twist after that which I haven’t decided how it fits, but I only got out an hour ago.)

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Spoilers herein are still vague, but less so.

I prefer to look at it as: Coulter jumped to each of those ten or so worlds (out of the gazillion that exist), for eight minutes at a time (or “until his death in the world,” actually; twice he stays out past the eight-minute mark) and then gets pulled back into the main movie universe each time. The last one’s interesting because he doesn’t have a life in the main movie universe to be pulled back into. This time if he dies in the Matrix he dies in real life– but there’s no reason for him to die in the Matrix just because he died in real life.

(Counterevidence: the sequence where Christina’s face is breaking up. I got nothing.)

Sean Fentriss died so the rest of us could gaze at the reflection of Michelle Monaghan in the Bean.

Yeah, that was bothersome (both the death and the ‘relationship with a girl he doesn’t know’ parts). I had to work very hard not to think about that part, because I knew if I did it was going to ruin the upbeat ending of the movie for me.

Also and unrelatedly, Vera Farmiga is 100% awesome.

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I disagree. Vera Farmiga is 4,000% awesome.

The odd thing about the movie, I thought (and we’re well into spoilerland, right?) was that it only makes sense once you reach the final explanation, essentially the many-worlds theory.

Otherwise, how would the memories of Sean Fentriss know who the bomber was, about the white van, the gun in the closet, etc etc? As Wright originally presents it, as “reliving the memories of this one guy’s last 8 minutes alive”, it would make NO sense. Luckily, it turns out that’s not what is really happening!

I thought it was funny that Jeff Wright proclaims the program a success even though he also says Jake might be the only person for whom Source Code even works; and has also said Jake was linked to Fentriss because of similarity in age, physical characteristics, etc. “We can prevent any disaster, so long as it is preceeded by a smaller disaster with the same root cause, and so long as that smaller disaster claims the life of a thirtysomething white male around 5’11”, 190 lbs.”

All that said I really enjoyed the movie. 🙂

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coren, I’d say the latter: a new universe is created by the time travel.

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