Source Code

For Source Code, the bigger budget follow-up to his fascinatingly minimal sci-fi debut, Moon, British filmmaker Duncan Jones goes high concept, but retains his knack for emotive and understated storytelling. The movie follows Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan, as he wakes up on a commuter train heading into Chicago. Colter is not only perplexed by his location, he's shocked to discover that he's in the body of an entirely different person. He tries to makes sense of his situation by talking to lovely fellow traveler Christina (Michelle Monaghan), but dramatic circumstances find him back in a dark isolated cockpit, with only a guarded woman named Goodwin (Vera Fermiga) tethering him to reality via remote instructions. Soon Colter begins to grasp his mission—he's being sent back into the stranger's body again and again until he can find the identity of a bomber intent on blowing up the train. While this conceit could have made for a rote special-effects-laden affair, Jones takes a route that favors claustrophobia, tension, and slowly building suspense, throwing in a trippy amount of quantum physics for good measure. Gyllenhaal, Monaghan, Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright (seemingly channeling Orson Welles) are all in excellent form, helping Jones to both ground and elevate this intriguingly streamlined existential mystery.