The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I suppose since, in a few hours, I am going to watch a movie, I should probably get around to writing down my thoughts of the last movie I saw. That movie was Source Code.

Mr. Gyllenhaal is an army man but also a history teacher and he is on a magic computer train that explodes over and over. You get to watch him fail over and over in a series of wacky exploits. Okay, well, not really wacky. But exploits, certainly.
See, by recreating the last 8 minutes of time before a bomb on a train blew up from the memories of people who have exploded (work with me here) a secret government project can perfectly replay what happened, and even have it magically change completely and still function in a way they consider “true” to reality. Jake Gyllenhaal becomes the man on the train he has the best sync with, and relives these minutes over and over to attempt to gain information about the guy who blew the train up.
That’s the premise.

It’s one of those kind of movies that kind of falls apart if you try to actually think about the science handwaving the movie is doing. However, the characterization in the film is pretty nice. Gyllenhaal was reacting in very realistic ways to the really weird situation he was put in, and was certainly being a hero. The movie handwaves SUPER EXTRA HARD at the end to give him a happy ending, and though it breaks down the moment you leave the theater and think about how it ended, it feels like his character has earned it, so it doesn’t really bother during viewing.
Other than the ending, the only thing I really felt was a promise was the romance between Gyllenhaal’s character and his love interest. For one, love interest is reset every time the timeline restarts, so there’s already a bit of a problem there with building them up. However, a lot of the feelings for this woman seem to be built during a part of the movie where there’s a serious montage that indicated that a lot of shit is going down. This time frame is a very unspecified length of time, and I can totally see it being long enough for feelings to form. However, as an audience member, I don’t really get to see that. I’m kind of told that those feelings are appearing, not shown. It’s unfortunate, as what is there between the two of them is fairly solid.

Those are really the only potential problems. I talk about them because the rest is solid, though not in your face. Nothing jumps out as “OMG THE BEST PART” but all of it was fun. The movie starts strong, and runs right on through in a very enjoyable manner. Unless you are super annoyed by the magic in a setting not being explained sensibly, it’s a fine time at the theater. It just runs on by, and you sit there, mesmerized and enjoying it. This is by the guy who did Moon, which is apparently the Cat’s Pajamas, though I have not seen it, but he certainly seems like a solid piece of work to have made this. Source Code isn’t the perfect movie, but it is a really fun movie, and it is worth seeing.