Where's Al when you need him?

Source Code
Director: Duncan Jones
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Released: April 1, 2011

In order to talk about this movie and discuss things that I find interesting (and confusing!), I have to spoil this movie, so if you have not seen it yet, you have been warned. There are going to be some huge spoilers revealed. I repeat, you have been warned! (By the way, it is a movie worth checking out, so go see it first and then come back and read this, because I would hate to have ruined it for you!)

Okay, so have you seen the movie? Good. If you haven't, I'll explain what it's about and maybe that will get you interested in seeing it before I really start spoiling things (which I need to do to really go in depth about this movie). Jake Gyllenhaal is sleeping on a train and wakes up quite disorientated. It's clear he doesn't know where he is or why he's there. He's looking around wildly and the woman sitting across from him (Michelle Monaghan) asks him if he's all right. It's clear that she knows him, but he doesn't know who she is. She keeps calling him "Sean" and he tells her his real name is Captian Colter Stevens and she just sort of laughs him off. He goes into a bathroom and when he looks in the reflection, it is not his, but a stranger's. The train ends up being blown up and he wakes up in a pod. On a TV screen Vera Farmiga is asking him if he found the bomb. Colter is very confused and soon learns that there has been a terrorist attack on the train and he's been sent to relive the last eight minutes as one of the passengers on the train (who was picked because he has the same body shape and was about the same age as Colter) to find who was responsible so he could stop a more massive attack on the entire city of Chicago. (Please don't ask me to explain the logistics of the situation...)

He keeps going back to this man's last eight minutes and with each one you get a different scenario, so it was kind of like a serious Groundhog Day. With each scenario, you got a clue to who wasn't involved and you learned something new each time...like that fact that Colter was actually dead, but they were keeping a part of his brain alive so he could go on these missions. Don't ask me how that works.

Eventually Colter does find the bomber and he relays this information and the police and FBI are able to stop the suspect before he blows up an entire city. His mission was to stop this, but he wants to go back one more time and save everyone on the train because after going back so many times, he has fallen for Christina, his pretty companion. He does end up saving her and everyone else and he suspects that after the eight minutes this time, he'll die and the real Sean will be saved too, but no, Colter is still alive, but he's still inside Sean's body, so everyone thinks it's this Sean guy, but really it's Colter who's controlling him. Well, what about poor Sean? Everyone else on the train got to live, but that poor schmuck is the only one who had to give his life that day and not only that, but some stranger has inhabited his body and will have his girlfriend and his family confused...(and even more confused when they notice that "Sean" is acting differently), they'll never know that the REAL Sean is dead. Doesn't seem very fair to me! Now as an audience member, I know we're not supposed to care about Sean since we never met him and only see what he looks like for a split second.

There were many elements of this film that reminded me of Quantum Leap and while watching the commentary, the director said the same thing and he got Scott Bakula to voice Colter's father, so I thought that was cool.

I did like the movie, but it kind of gave me a headache and I felt bad for Sean!