"Do you believe in fate?"

No. I had a problem with Source Code the first time I saw it because I don't believe in fate. As a result, I thought the ending was silly and ruined all the excellent theoretical groundwork the rest of the movie had laid. As with Europa Report, I thought it had a powerful potential ending in the final cut, and by not stopping there, it recast my perception of the film in a negative light. But because of how much I love Duncan Jones's Moon, I promised myself I would revisit it once I had gained sufficient distance to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes, and I'm glad I did because it turned out to be a much more enjoyable experience.

As he firmly established in Moon two years earlier, Duncan Jones is interested in exploring identity through science fiction. Here he takes elements of The Matrix and Inception to the next level by asking what happens when we take one man's identity and put it in another man's body. It also asks big questions about the meaning of life (i.e. "What would you do if you had less than a minute left to life?" is essentially the same as "What would you do if you had less than 50 years left to live?"), and while any answers it provides are pretty thin I always love sci-fi which bites off a lot even if it can't chew it all.

My favorite sequences in the film are actually the ones with Jake Gyllenhaal in the mysterious cockpit. Not only do they mimic the position of the audience in an uncanny way, they're perfectly shot to represent Gyllenhaal's state of mind. We get claustrophobic extreme close ups when he's uncomfortable and more wide-angle shots as he becomes more relaxed. There's also a revelation which I don't want to spoil which makes these scenes into more visual metaphor than direct representation and adds a layer of meaning to every detail of the strange surroundings.

A potential problem with all time loop narratives like this is that (especially on rewatch) they can become tiresome, but Source Code evades this pitfall by utilizing creative editing techniques to make each trip through the loop distinct and purposeful. The first few trips highlight certain aspects of the loop (soda, coffee, ticket, etc.) which the later trips use to fast forward to where it wants us to be. There are also a fair few humorous moments (e.g. when he predicts things he could never know about), but I think both Groundhog Day as well as the recent Edge of Tomorrow are stronger in this area, while Source Code stands out for its exceptional editing.

Instead what became slightly tiresome on rewatch was the abundance of exposition. There are several moments where the technicians are explaining how the source code works to Gyllenhaal (and by extension the audience), and when you already know what's going on, it can be slightly annoying (albeit understandable) to watch him struggle through ideas you already grasp. This was only a minor speed bump in my enjoyment, and while I can fantasize all day about what a movie like this would be like without the spoon-feeding I realize it's just not going to happen.

I still don't like the ending, but with some renewed perspective I was much more capable of enjoying the creativity and ambition of the other 95% of the film. As a director pushing for new and interesting ideas in the science fiction genre it's hard for me to understate my excitement for the rest of his career. Now if only he'll finish up with his Warcraft movie and go back to sci-fi, everything will be right with the universe.

Original review

(Brief aside: there's a way in which all these time loop narratives romanticize the repetitive monotony of life under capitalism. They tell us, "Yes, your job is boring and tedious, but every day you get better at what you do so that one day you can break the cycle and reach true happiness." This empty fantasy is part of the reason why I don't like the ending here or in Edge of Tomorrow, and while Groundhog Day is the most critical of this process—e.g. Bill Murray's existential depression—it still ultimately participates in the same fantasmatic structure.)