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Source Code

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright
Directed By: Duncan Jones
Screenplay By: Ben Ripley

     It's nice to know that Hollywood has finally found some originality, even if this originality seems like a combination of Groundhog Day and Inception.
     Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a military helicopter pilot who has recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan.  He's the perfect match for this new program called the Source Code.  It allows a person to enter another person and become them for the last eight minutes of their life.  Seems kind of weird, no?  His job, to become a passenger on a train that has been bombed and look for the bomb, as well as the bomber.  If he fails the mission, he'll just keep going back into the program in the same situation until he succeeds.
      Along the way, he meets a woman, Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan), and begins to like her, even though he sees her do the same things on the train every single time, and thinks he's gone mad, every single time.  He wants to save her from the looming explosion that's going to kill everyone on board the train.  The problem?  The Source Code can't change reality.  Will Stevens find out who the bomber is and what the Source Code is really about?
     All of the actors deliver strong performances.  I'm surprised that Matt Damon wasn't chosen to play the role of Captain Stevens, because it's hard to imagine someone else playing this kind of role since we see Damon play this role in so many movies these days.  Gyllenhaal is excellent in this role, probably one of his best performances yet.  Farmiga and Wright are excellent in their roles as the controllers of the Source Code.
     There are some parts of the story that are a little too Sci-Fi, but you just have to go with it.  When Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), the inventor of the source code explains to Stevens what the source code really is, and how it works, it can get a little confusing.  There is some complicated dialogue in this explanation.
     Duncan Jones does an exellent job at not hinting who the bomber is.  There are no clues, making the film a total mystery and unpredictable.
    I'm happy to say that this is a film worth watching, even if you don't like Sci-Fi or mysteries.  It's really well done and it's pretty straight forward.  It's not hard to follow at all.
    I'm giving this movie a B+.

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