SOURCE CODE

STATE RAIL AND PEAK HANDSOME

Review by: James

I reckon you can watch the trailer for any movie and within 30 seconds decide two things:

1) This movie is going to be unreal/terrible and 

2) I am going to love/hate this movie.

And normally if a film is terrible you are going to hate it, and vice versa. Strangely though, this is not always the case.

Recent Example: Battle: Los Angeles.

Upon seeing the trailer, I knew immediately that is was going to be a terrible film. I also knew immediately that I would love it. And yep, nailed it. Correct on  both fronts. (Yumi would argue that I’m being ridiculous and there is no way you could like this film. She would be wrong.)

But just when you think you have honed your YouTube trailer watching snap judgement skills to a ninja-like precision, a film comes along and fucks it all up. Before seeing Source Code, I watched the trailer and had the immediately certain reaction “that looks woeful and I will not enjoy it”. I’d decided it was like a sci-fi version of last years  very average Unstoppable. I was wrong on all counts.  Nice one brain.

Source Code begins when Jake Gyllenhaal, wakes up on a train. He knows not where he is, who he is or what is happening. There is an attractive woman in front of him.  This has never happened to me. The last time I woke up on a train not knowing who I was or what was happening, I was trying to get home drunk from Homebush Bay. There was someone else’s blood on my shirt and stale Doritos in my hair. There was no attractive woman. It was a horrible night. If only I could have woken up as Jake Gyllenhaal.

For the first part of Source Code, this scenario plays itself out over and over again.  Jake and I are both thinking “What the fuck is going on here?” but together we start to make sense of it all. Sort of.  Turns out Jake is a soldier being used in a revolutionary physics distorting experiment where he can go right inside someone else’s body (not like that.) There’s a bomb on the train you see, he’s got to find who planted it, and save the girl. Or does he? By the way, you’ve  only got 8 minutes.

Michelle Monaghan, who is like a hot version of Katie Holmes is the bewildered but patient girl on the train. Vera Farmiga , my second favourite Ukranian-American actress (behind Mila Kunis) is Jake’s military contact to the outside world.  I like the cut of her jib.

Have you noticed that Jake Gyllenhaal gets more handsome every year? He is currently 30, and at this rate I imagine at about 38, he will enter an illustrious zone called “Peak Handsomeness”. This is the small but fantastic 18 month period where you are as hot as you are ever going to look. The tricky part is that you only know you were there after it ends. After that point it is a very slow but deliberate slide in the other direction. It is truly a glorious, golden time for any actor/model/hornbag. And although many movie stars stay attractive well into their late 40’s and beyond, that high watermark of hotness, the summit of your aesthetic Mt Everest is a wondrous, fleeting time. Some examples of Peak Handsomeness in film are:

- Although outrageously ripped in Fight Club, Brad Pitt’s peak handsomeness actually occurred during Oceans Eleven. He was 37.

- You want to say Out of Sight for Clooney, but it actually didn’t happen till he was 44 in Goodnight and Goodluck.

- Depp is a tricky one, as there seems no end to his exquisiteness trajectory. But he was never more arse-clenchingly (not really a word) gorgeous than at 36 in Chocolat

- Steve Buscemi has either not yet reached peak handsomeness or it happened very, very young.

As for Source Code… Director Duncan Jones (who was behind 2009’s truly excellent Moon) makes sure its tense, never dull and that it falls into one of my all time favourite film categories: Movies under 100 minutes long (more on that in coming weeks).

Probably the best time travel body displacement action adventure film of the year. So far.

STARS: Not quite 4 but more than 3 stars sounds like too many. 3.75 stars.

SUMMARY: I didn’t know what was happening either.

WHO SHOULD SEE IT: Fans of Groundhog Day. People who like trains.

RELEASE DATE: In cinemas now