Movie review: Source Code ***

Source Code ***

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Director: Duncan Jones
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Liberty Theatre week of Friday, April 8 - Friday, Saturday 2:30/6/9pm; Sunday 2:30/5:30pm; weekdays 2:30/7:30pm. For more information about film times, call 292-7296.
Tickets: Buy tickets online
Runtime: 93 minutes
Action/thriller/romance

Remember the 1980s TV series Quantum Leap? Scientist Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) leapt into a different body in a different time period to set things right that once went wrong.

Mix that with Groundhog Day and Speed and you get Source Code, a well-scripted and acted sci-fi action thriller.

Jake Gyllenhaal (Zodiac, Brokeback Mountain) plays decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens, who wakes up in another man’s body on a train to Chicago. His last memory is of being in Afghanistan.

Eight minutes later, the train, carrying hundreds of commuters, blows up in a massive explosion.

Colter comes to — and finds himself in a cramped space being told via a video screen by an army officer (Vera Farmiga, Up In The Air), that he is part of a government experiment that uses a ‘source code’ to send him back to relive the last eight minutes of another person’s life.

His task is to replay those final minutes again and again in order to find the bomber — a terrorist who is planning a much larger attack later that day.

So Colter repeatedly relives the tragedy, trying to track the bomber, work out how he ended up there and also get the girl, after he falls for cute commuter Christina (Michelle Monaghan, Due Date). The latter is made more problematic by the fact she is already dead and he cannot change the past to save her.

The complex narrative raises many questions thanks to skillful handling by director Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, who also helmed the acclaimed Moon.

He also plays with viewer expectations when it comes to the bomber’s identity and, like Colter, we make the wrong assumptions — there are a lot of red herrings.

The talented Gyllenhaal gives a compassionate performance and has great chemistry with Monaghan.

Watch if you liked: Inception, Minority Report.