My family really wanted to watch this movie, but we couldn't watch it until last night because it wasn't available until then.
The premise of the movie is that a soldier who has died in war in Afghanistan has had his brain kept alive and the rest of his body on life support to participate in a program called the Source Code. Basically, it allows a person to relive the last eight minutes of their lives in different scenarios — essentially, parallel alternate realities. While it is initially established that said people can't change the past, they can search for information in the past to change the events of the future. This soldier is being used to find a bomber on a Chicago commuter train who first blew up said train and then plans to follow that up with an even more devastating bombing in the city center. After several tries, in which the same final 8 minutes before the train explosion (in which the soldier supposedly dies, after which the soldier comes back to "reality" inside an odd pod-like room) repeats while the soldier finds more clues and uses elimination to find the real bomber, the soldier finds that he can actually alter the course of reality and make the bombing not happen at all.
This movie was basically a cross between The Matrix (for questioning the nature of reality) and Groundhog Day (for repeating the same scene over and over again, though admittedly, I have not watched that movie yet). After about 15 minutes, the course the movie would take became entirely predictable. Furthermore, it was pretty easy to see that at the end, when the soldier's life was terminated, it would turn out that he could continue living after all. Finally, the circular reference at the very end was just silly and needlessly confusing. In short, I don't recommend this movie, though I did appreciate the inclusion of one of my favorite comedians, Russell Peters.
The premise of the movie is that a soldier who has died in war in Afghanistan has had his brain kept alive and the rest of his body on life support to participate in a program called the Source Code. Basically, it allows a person to relive the last eight minutes of their lives in different scenarios — essentially, parallel alternate realities. While it is initially established that said people can't change the past, they can search for information in the past to change the events of the future. This soldier is being used to find a bomber on a Chicago commuter train who first blew up said train and then plans to follow that up with an even more devastating bombing in the city center. After several tries, in which the same final 8 minutes before the train explosion (in which the soldier supposedly dies, after which the soldier comes back to "reality" inside an odd pod-like room) repeats while the soldier finds more clues and uses elimination to find the real bomber, the soldier finds that he can actually alter the course of reality and make the bombing not happen at all.
This movie was basically a cross between The Matrix (for questioning the nature of reality) and Groundhog Day (for repeating the same scene over and over again, though admittedly, I have not watched that movie yet). After about 15 minutes, the course the movie would take became entirely predictable. Furthermore, it was pretty easy to see that at the end, when the soldier's life was terminated, it would turn out that he could continue living after all. Finally, the circular reference at the very end was just silly and needlessly confusing. In short, I don't recommend this movie, though I did appreciate the inclusion of one of my favorite comedians, Russell Peters.
