Just concluding a military tour in Afghanistan, it seems, Stevens has been tasked to figure out how the hell some terrorist creep blows up a Chicagoland commuter train. The blast kills all on board, including Colter and his perky and attractive seat mate, Christina Warren. That's Michelle Monaghan. The train blows up, over and over and over again, until Stevens solves the problem... and, hopefully, will be able to avert an even more disastrous event the evil dipshit has in store for an unsuspecting Windy City on a spring-like Monday afternoon.
It's pretty neat how the nobly motivated Stevens is able to repeat his efforts trying to foil the mad bomber. In an anonymous command center, under the watchful eye of Dr. Rutledge, played by an all at sea Jeffrey Wright, Captain Goodwin (let me see... how can I say this as simply as I can?)... electronically transmutes Stevens from one parallel time stream into another parallel time stream. Rutledge and Goodwin, I guess you could say, reboot Stevens in a bodacious manner that's way too rocket-sciency for me to understand. The secret government process makes it possible for Stevens to take several passes at accomplishing the dire mission. After Stevens dies in each horrific commuter train-blast- playback (so to speak), suddenly, he's alone, "back" aboard an anonymous "capsule," not unlike the anonymity that confronts us regarding the command center. Stevens is conversing with Captain Goodwin about his next turn in the troubled time stream. You know ... the time stream that's parallel to the one they're both in (at the moment) talking back and forth on secret, special telemetry mentioned in the first paragraph. (Breathe... now... re-focus.) Yip, that's pretty much it, except, Stevens, as he honorably soldiers his way through who's NOT culpable, to catch the one who IS culpable for the bombing, screws up pretty, pretty, pretty, bad. And it was pretty, pretty pretty hard for me to not laugh at some of Stevens' goof-ups getting his, uh, uh, person. Some people in the theater with me were NOT amused. And to them all, I humbly apologize.
Could be that director Duncan Jones and scriptwriter Ben Ripley should be repentant, as well. As described so far, this is a pretty, pretty, pretty silly movie. But what Jones and Ripley do for the ending tacked onto "Source Code," they might want to pony up some, and come through to help defray ticket prices for everyone who wants to see this turkey. You ain't ever seen a denouement like this one before, I'd venture a guess. To abstrusely put it: there's nothing like seeing a movie that depicts people being blown apart in a terrorist train bombing, over and over and over again... and then tells you everything is going to be all right... and simply because of that... everyone who's just watched "Source Code" will feel real good about everything... whatever parallel time stream they happen to be in. A light, maybe, Mr. Serling?
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Gary Chew can be reached
at garychew@comcast.net, |
