Source Code

Directed by Duncan Jones

(PG-13)

***

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“The Source Code is a gift: Don’t squander it by thinking.” That’s the advice Jake Gyllenhaal’s character gets at one point in this “high-octane mind game” of a thriller, and audiences would be wise to follow suit, said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Gyllenhaal plays a deeply disoriented man who awakes on a train minutes before it explodes. Then, as if a reset button has been hit, he has to relive those eight minutes again and again. If it sounds like a “science-fiction thriller version of Groundhog Day,” that’s nothing to complain about, said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Cleverly, Source Code uses each do-over to add mystery and tension to its ticking-time-bomb plot, in which Gyllenhaal is eventually revealed to be a military officer sent on a time-traveling mission to identify the bomber and avert disaster. Though the story’s logic is preposterous, the premise generates “a propulsive ride worth your popcorn dollar,” said Aaron Hillis in The Village Voice. Its secret weapon is its “sneaky compassion”: Gyllenhaal convincingly “sells” the idea that saving innocents might be the ultimate act of wish fulfillment.