Source Code

In this improbably Hitchcockian hybrid of Quantum Leap and Groundhog Day from the writer of Species III (Ben Ripley) and, more promisingly, the director of Moon (Duncan Jones), Jake Gyllenhaal plays an Air Force pilot confusedly thwarting terrorism by repeatedly reliving the last eight minutes of another man’s life. Wha?? He has help from Michelle Monaghan as a functional and dutifully cute love interest, Vera Farmiga as a prim but sympathetic liaison officer and Jeffrey Wright as a staidly mad, scenery-nibbling scientist. It’s a lot less horrible than its own trailer makes it seem, and just goes to show that mind-bending sci-fi genre geekery and popcorn-munching sentimentalism actually can exist in simultaneous parallel realities. The cheesy effects don’t matter because the story doesn’t depend on them, and Gyllenhaal, ever the puzzle-movie dreamboat hero, is appealingly sincere. It’s one of those movies you love when you’re young, then realize is really dumb, then love again nostalgically.