by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright April 2011
Source Code is a nice science fiction thriller. It's got a lot of standard plot devices -- terrorists, dirty bombs, ticking clocks, mystery circumstances -- but it handles them well and the actors and special effects support the story well. I liked what I saw. There were some technofiction weaknesses but not enough to stop enjoying the movie.
This story is told through the eyes of Cpt. Colter Stevens, and it is a strange story, indeed. He wakes up in the body of a different man, on a Chicago-bound commuter train, and eight minutes later experiences a bomb blast which blows him and the train to bits. He then repeats this experience, over and over. He discovers his mission is to figure out who set the bomb, and why the Sam Hill he is here in this different body! Before this weirdness began he had been a helicopter pilot flying a combat mission in Afghanistan.
His condition is steadily revealed as he keeps going back into this scenario to try to solve the mystery. In the end he solves both mysteries, falls in love with the beautiful woman on the train, and there's a happy twist at the end.
The director, Duncan Jones, also did Moon a movie I quite enjoyed as well. I'm happy to see he's keeping up the good work.
That's the good news. Here are the technofiction flaws I saw:
o The first problem I noticed was that the bomber managed to tote a 50-70 pound bomb made up of dozens of separate parts into the train restroom and smoosh it up the ventilator panel and into a stable place up there above the ceiling without anyone else on the train taking notice. He's a strong, agile boy, indeed!
o The second problem was that as the story unfolds it becomes more and more plot deviceish. We have a bomber who's going to not just blow up this train, but blow up Chicago as well, and somehow the authorities find out that this train bomb is just a prelude. ...Wow! That's asking a lot.
Asking even more: This is being done by just one person! He's going to build, deposit, and set off both devices. MacGyver on steroids!
All of the above seems to be unfolded just to give some urgency to this story.
o Somehow... out of this devastating carnage of a train wreck. The top-secret military people locate a passenger brain that is still alive enough that they can transfer full sensory images to Cpt. Stevens' mind. And they do this within minutes of the wreck happening because the clock is ticking on "the big one" still coming.
There's never a cop around when you need one, but there's a super-secret military agency johnny-on-the-spot when you need a movie plot device.
o Small point: The brain takes time to record what it experiences. This is why people often report they don't remember sudden surprising incidents that involve head-banging such as car crashes. Our dead person's brain would not have memory of the "boom" itself.
o Not quite so small point: in some of his recreations our protagonist wanders far from the train. These are places which are not going to be in the memory of the dead man. They have been added to the recreation in some other fashion. How this is happening is not clear, but it means there is no "edge" on what Stevens experiences, no area he can't go, and this wide world view doesn't raise any eyebrows in his mission controllers, either. Somehow they expect this as well.
o For some reason having Stevens practice a few times, and understand what his condition is, isn't going to work. The story tells us that this top secret outfit has been waiting patiently for a disaster of this sort so they could test their new creation, so there was plenty of time to get Stevens acclimated should they have chosen to do so.
o At one point they say the blast was deliberately timed to go off when the commuter train was passing a freight train. The military people imply the bomber was watching for this to happen, which implies the bomber was following the train in his car and able to see when this happened.
...Well, he's already strong and agile enough to get a 50-70 pound bomb up the restroom ventilator, and engineer enough to build the bomb all by himself, I guess he can be a NASCAR-class driver as well.
o The second bomb, the one the military is trying desperately to stop, is described as a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb is a conventional bomb with some radioactive stuff mixed in. It's not a nuclear bomb and it's not as powerful as one. It's a run-of-the-mill car bomb plus some radioactive contamination. It is not going to turn Chicago into rubble, the goal the mad bomber says he's aiming for.
o I won't go into detail, but the "who" Cpt. Stevens is affecting as he runs through this scenario again and again is something that takes some serious belief suspension, but I will grant that.
So, all in all, it's a nice thriller to watch. It's well crafted and the acting, pacing and special effects do well at supporting the story. But the story itself is a technofiction head-scratcher.
-- The End --