Source Code - reviewed by Fennecritic Film Review
Fennecritic Film Review Presents
Source Code
Source Code sort-of came out of the blue for me. It looked interesting from the previews and I figured I’d end up seeing it, but I wasn’t really wild about it. Clearly it had a science-fiction element to it, and a sort of Philip K. Dick “precog” plot, but the premise didn’t thrill me, nor any of my movie-buddies. What did thrill them, however, was that Source Code is directed by the same director of the movie “Moon” - which they’ve all seen and touted as amazing. Unfortunately I haven’t seen Moon, so I really can’t say if it was good or not... but I hear it was good, and they seemed pretty excited about a new film by the same guy, so (of course) we all went out to see Source Code.
The film is about a man who is in a machine that allows him to relive the last eight minutes of another man’s life just before he was killed in a terrorist bombing of a train. The goal of this is to investigate and attempt to discover who the culprit of the bombing is so that they can prevent him from carrying out any more acts of terrorism.
I don’t want to give anything away because there’s obviously a mystery here and … well that’s sort-of the point of the movie, and saying “it was the butler in the kitchen with the knife” would be mean, but I will say that I felt it was a little obvious... not only the “who done it”, but also the conclusion of the story. While I was a little disappointed at the obviousness, I think the film was otherwise very good. The pacing was pretty nice... it was a little bit muddy in the middle where they implied that he went back into the memory untold more times... I’m not sure if this was necessary, since nothing was gleamed from it, but perhaps it was an attempt to add some fervor to the main character’s plight of having to relive someone else’s death over and over again. The acting was pretty good... the writing was pretty good too. The only place in the writing that was really weak is when they find out the terrorist’s motives, which seemed extremely unconvincing to me. The acting is superb, and the special effects (what little there are) I thought were very good as well.
Overall it was a good, but unexceptional film. The good acting and execution doesn’t really make up for the mediocrity of the plot... which is mostly just mediocre because the mystery is so very un-mysterious. Even so, it is an enjoyable film to watch, but I don’t think one can take much from it. I give it one-ear-perked. There are some pretty good explosions, but I’d say its not worth the cost of the big screen just for those. DVD-rental, I think, would do the film just as much credit as a theater experience.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
-jas