Source Code (2011)

Captain Colter Stevens, a US helicopter pilot serving in Afghanistan, wakes up on a commuter train headed into Chicago. He is disoriented, but small details immediately catch his attention. The passenger opposite knows him, but keeps calling him Sean. He has no idea who anyone is or how he got there and as he struggles to get his bearings, the train explodes spectacularly. Stevens wakes up in a strange, disorienting chamber, with only a small screen connecting him to the outside world. He is told that he is taking part in a vital scientific experiment, whereby his consciousness is projected into another person's body. The purpose? To find out who detonates the bomb that destroys the train, in order to prevent the bomber's next planned attack, a dirty bomb due to be detonated later that morning in downtown Chicago. Stevens must keep going back into Sean's body for those last 8 minutes of his life, to try to piece together what happened and prevent a much more deadly attack.

*****

Director Duncan Jones launched himself on the cinema-going public with 2009's "Moon", a fantastic sci-fi debut packed full of great ideas relating to identity and personhood. This, his follow-up, is thankfully blessed with similarly big ideas such as fate, destiny and the value of human life. Jones has been given a much bigger budget to play with this time and although Source Code is more expansive than Moon, it still focuses on and works with a small number of characters, allowing us to get under their skin and engage with them meaningfully.

Coming across as a kind of cross between Quantum Leap and Groundhog Day, Source Code finds Jake Gyllenhaal's Captain Stevens reliving the last 8 minutes of a teacher's life over and over, trying each time to piece together more of the clues as to who is responsible. His initial disorientation, well-conveyed by seasoned brow-furrower Gyllenhaal, gives way to a fierce sense of purpose and focus and at times some much-welcome light-heartedness, necessary to leaven the heaviness of the death and destruction repeatedly emblazoned across the screen. As the commuter and romantic interest across the carriage, Michelle Monaghan brings once again the charm and believability essayed so convincingly in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Mission: Impossible 3. If there is any justice in the world, she will continue to go from strength to strength and enjoy the increased success and profile that her considerable talent merit. Here, she has a considerably tougher role than Gyllenhaal, who is allowed to and indeed must develop, evolve with each successive leap. By contrast Monaghan had to play the same scene, with gradual variations, much straighter, without giving any indication in her performance that she is aware of the events of previous "leaps". It is entirely believable that despite having only just met her, Stevens would want to move heaven and earth to save her, such is her warmth and beauty.

Back in the control room, we find Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Departed) as Stevens main point of contact. She is initially business-like, keeping Stevens focused on the mission, but there is an underlying compassion and sympathy about her and the conflictedness this engenders within her is adroitly conveyed. Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale, Ali, Syriana) is Farmiga's boss and the overseer of the experiment. Although he is ruthless and abrupt at times, he is no monster, simply a man desperate to see the success of his project and he is as well-fleshed out as anyone else here.

Just as with the peerless Groundhog Day, subtle changes and Stevens increasing ease within the experiment keep the repetitive story elements from becoming boring or predictable. A plot device means that Stevens can only visit the final 8 minutes of Sean's life, so the pace is kept ratcheting along, with Stevens following assorted potentially red herrings, false leads and futile efforts, before finally beginning to close in on the bomber. Gyllenhaal moves through the emotions, from confusion, desperation and frustration, into hope, determination and self-assuredness. The progression is gradual and believable rather than jolting and helps to draw us into the film and Stevens plight in particular.

As rammed-full as it is with great performances, big ideas and a compelling story, Source Code does eventually fall short of great sci-fi in general and the high water mark of Jones's work on Moon in particular. For reasons that are beyond me, Jones eschews the gut-punch and ambiguity of Moon, in favour of tidiness and pat resolutions. Perhaps the magic words, "studio interference" come into play here, with Jones paying the price (as Pegg & Frost did with Paul) for being entrusted with a stack of studio money by having to toe the line on various directives as to story resolution. It doesn't blight one's enjoyment of the film by any stretch of the imagination, as it remains intriguing and inventive. It's just a shame that it couldn't also have been daring. It's something that we don't seem to see so much of these days.

Jarhead (2005)

I must confess to not having read the memoirs of Anthony "Swoff" Swofford, on which this intriguing, striking but ultimately frustrating film is based.
Swoff, played here by the effective and talented Jake Gyllenhaal, "fought" in the first Iraq war and the film tells for the most part the story of his boredom and frustration as he sat in the Kuwaiti desert with increasing numbers of US soldiers, waiting for the all clear to proceed with an invasion that in the end lasted all of four days.
We find Swoff first of all at boot camp, getting yelled at by a drill sergeant in a manner not remotely dissimilar to the first half of the superior Full Metal Jacket. So far, so predictable. Soon though, orders come through to ship out to the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Shield, the precursor to Desert Storm. Those orders arrive halfway through unabashed hollering and cheering during a troop screening of the chopper attack from Apocalypse Now. Rather than being a generation of grunts raised on the harsh realities of Platoon and The Deer Hunter, aware of the brutality and ultimate futility of much of modern warfare, we instead have a room full of jarheads, yelling along to "Ride of the Valkyries" and crying "get some", like there's no tomorrow. These are boys and men entirely consumed by their love for battle, unaware in any sense of what really awaits them.
What turns out to await them is spirit-sapping, soul-destroying boredom. They arrive, they drill, they practice shooting, the play football in their chemical warfare suits, they pretend to dry-hump each other in front of a visiting news crew, they set off a truckload of flares while frying sausages and they rib each other with merciless vulgarity and enthusiasm. On screen titles regularly update us as to how many troops have arrived from the US and how long Swoff has been there until finally, mercifully, they set off into Iraq to drive out the Iraq Republican Army and reclaim Kuwait for the Kuwaitis. The invasion winds up being over before it has even started and there is a hugely affecting and effective scene when Swoff and his target man, the excellent Peter Sarsgaard, are camped out, ready to take out an Iraqi officer by sniper rifle, when a major steps in and tells them to stop so that he can carpet bomb the building they have scouted. Sarsgaard is desperate to contribute something, anything to the war effort and begs and pleads the Major for the chance to take their shot before the bombing commences, only to be refused. Sarsgaard goes off the deep end, screaming and crying, before collapsing in the corner, destroyed by the frustration and futility of the entire situation.
It is moments like these that ultimately make the film worthwhile, but it is worthwhile rather than essential. Director Sam Mendes seems to have an uncanny grasp of the tone and style of essentially American films, despite his background in English theatre. American Beauty and Road to Perdition got under the skin of white picket fence Americana and the Prohibition-era gangster film respectively and Mendes successfully grapples with the US war film genre as well. We feel Swoff's weariness, his exasperation, his despair and the cinematography is breathtaking too. Endless shimmering deserts eventually give way to burning oil wells, the sky thick with black smoke and raining oil. "The earth is bleeding", says Swoff.
The difficulty ultimately is not with the performances or the cinematography. Fundamentally, the film seems to a lack a sense of its place in history. Set during the first Iraqi war, but released during the second, the film seems uninterested in saying anything about the current invasion and war, or modern warfare in general. The boredom of the wait in the desert is effectively presented but that leaves the overall message as "waiting in the desert is really boring and frustrating when you are keen to get on and invade", which is really no message at all. Does every film have to be loaded with meaning? Of course not, but for a film set and released in the historical and political climates of 1991 and 2005 respectively, it represents something of a missed opportunity. Worth watching, but once will be enough.