A solid time bending mystery.

The film follows a man named Colter who finds himself stuck in the simulation of the last 8 minutes of another man's life wherein he must find a way to identify a bomber so he can be located in the real world.

I'm just gonna say, I really like the premise of this. It's a time loop mystery on a countdown clock, as Jake Gyllenhaal has to find a bomber on a train before the bomb goes off and if he doesn't he's back to square one. There's some good tension there, as both he and Michelle Monaghan are very likeable characters, and you want them to survive despite everyone always telling Colter there is no way for him to save anyone on the train. With this being a time loop movie, there is definitely a possibility that the film can get repetitive, and to some extent it is, but every time Colter goes through the sim we learn something new and important. The pace is always kept high enough for the repetition to not set in.

The movie also has a pretty good story going on in here too. Colter doesn't really know where he is or why, and as you learn more and more about his situation you can't help but feel for the guy. Gyllenhaal is acting his ass off here, and he gets some surprisingly emotional scenes in the film's second half. That's not to say that everything the plot has going is great, as the eventual villain reveal kind of falls flat (I have seen this movie multiple times and it always feels cheap to me), and I do think the writers talk down to the audience from time to time, but my real issue with the plot comes at the end.

I am going to be vague here to avoid going into spoilers, but I really do not care for the ending of the movie. It feels like they were trying too hard to make the film have a happy ending despite what the implications of it may be. There's a point not long before the end of the movie where the world freezes for a bit, and I really think ending it there would have been the best place to cut it, but they keep going for a few minutes and throw in one of the most questionable plot developments they could.

In the end, this has a couple issues, but it's a fun ride nonetheless. There's been a sequel in development forever and a day, so maybe one day we'll be able to re-enter the Source Code for more time loop mysteries.