The ‘Source’ of the problem

In theaters Friday: Colombiana, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Our Idiot Brother

New on DVD/Blu-ray: The Beaver, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Those who follow certain directors and their work may be familiar with the phrase, “one for me, one for them.” Essentially, it refers to the idea that an auteur filmmaker can secure funding for the movies he or she is really passionate about by making every other project a higher paying studio-chosen gig.

Director Duncan Jones’ freshman sci-fi film Moon won me over two years ago with its simple isolationist’s tale of Sam Rockwell’s lone astro-miner working on the moon with only a supercomputer, voiced by Kevin Spacey, for a friend. I looked forward to this year’s Source Code, new on DVD, as one giant leap in Jones’ evolution as a filmmaker. Having made an almost Kubrick-looking mindbender with just a few million dollars in 2009, I thought surely his major studio debut would be that much better. It isn’t.

Source Code is Jones’ “one for them,” a run-of-the-mill Hollywood thriller that never takes the time to explore the themes underlying its action as Moon did so well. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a U.S. soldier in an experiment that allows him to enter the body of a man in the last eight minutes of his life. The man Gyllanhaal embodies is a passenger on a Chicago commuter train that has been targeted by a terrorist bomber. Gyllenhaal’s mission is to find and arrest the terrorist and stop the train from exploding before the bomber can set off an even larger attack downtown. The catches are that he only has eight minutes each time, he relives the same eight minutes over and over, and he falls in love with a woman on the train—a woman he becomes desperate to save.

So, is it an action film? Well, yes, but its thrills are somewhat muted and obviously shackled by a certain level of repetition. Is it science fiction? Sort of, though the implications of the technology employed are not as thoroughly or as darkly explored as they should have been to really envelope the viewer in something shocking or awe-inspiring. What’s worse, the film’s two major reveals are dealt with using an odd subtlety that undercuts the true tension of what is happening on the train again and again.

Gyllenhaal adds emotional weight to the film and Michele Monaghan is likeable as always, but Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright give completely flat performances as the military puppet masters pulling Gyllenhaal’s neurological strings. A fine Sunday afternoon actioner and little more, Source Code is a missed opportunity, a clever conceit that deserved a better script and a more interesting supporting cast.

Jones’ next should be his “one for me,” and it is rumored to be the ambitious Berlin-set Mute which Jones will publish as a graphic novel first before seeking funding for the feature film adaptation. If Source Code does well enough on DVD, it could boost the filmmaker’s stock. That would benefit Hollywood because needs more original science fiction, and Jones is a talented storyteller capable of delivering as long as his source material is better than Source Code.