So continues my Action Trash 'n' Treasure Festival, and this one is definitely the latter. Part of the one two punch that affirmed for me that Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie no less, was a legit visionary who sought to plumb the cerebral and emotional depths of the science fiction genre. He did so on 2009's fantastic Moon and two years later took another swing for the bleachers with 2011's Source Code starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a movie that at the time was business as usual. He's an unusual and unassuming leading man who even by this point had starred in a number of critical hits (Zodiac, Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain) and taken a swing at the blockbuster (Prince of Persia). Source Code would begin a period in which it would seem he could do no wrong, jumping from this to the excellent End of Watch (2012) to a Villeneuve double feature: Prisoners and Enemy (both released in 2013) before arriving at his oft-praised turn as a sociopathic crime journalist in 2014's Nightcrawler.

Source Code was at the top end of that flurry and it's a fascinating snapshot of just where science fiction and action were at the time in that second decade of the 21st Century. The film has some rudimentary CGI and because it is as such, it never becomes a crutch and remains a storytelling flourish or device.

The idea is a Groundhog Day riff with a spin as Jake Gyllenhaal's Colter Steven's a former soldier, now a time detective, finds himself inexplicably on a train where he is occupying the body of another man, an ordinary school teacher commuting to work. Opposite him is the ever effervescent Michelle Monaghan, a close friend and an untapped love, but Colter soon becomes aware that the voices in his head are actual voices of a command centre instructing him on his time-sensitive mission. He has 8 minutes to find a bomber on the train, to find the bomb and disarm it. Yet with each subsequent go-round, Colter becomes suspicious of Command and what they both tell him and don't tell him leaves a surplus of mounting questions as to what is really going on. So there are two dovetailing mysteries. One, the bomb and the bomber and two, what are the circumstances that make this possible in the first place.

This was still a period in film when films like this were scored with heart and emotion and there's a real sense of this being an event at the cinema. Of course it's not as big as today's franchise juggernauts but this is precisely one of the film types I miss. I miss it being an event worth going to the cinema for, a mid-budget sci-fi action whose only promise is to keep you entertained for two hours. In Jones typical fashion, granted I haven't seen Warcraft, he also throws in a sizeable dosage of emotional complexity.

Source Code is a top notch sci-fi actioner evoking the unique point in time that was 2011 - rudimentary smart phones, heartfelt orchestral flourishes, rudimentary digital effects, and performances imbued with hope and optimism.

A top-notch watch.