Source Code; Glazed Donuts
Perform only the task that we assign you. Everything else is irrelevant.
Source Code (2011)
Director: Duncan Jones
Had I seen this before: Yes
Time loop variety/genre: Technological (machine)/ thriller
We’ve seen a few variations of temporal loops so far—karmic, alien, magical-cave-induced—but today we ask the question: what if the time loop you were caught in was actually just a shitty job with incompetent upper management? And further, what if it were not a job for which you were particularly qualified? And on top of all that, what if your dad were Scott Bakula? Oh boy.
We open with some tense Here Comes Action music over shots of a city that I deduced was Chicago based on the following factors: there’s water nearby and it does not look like New York or Los Angeles. Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is sleeping against a train window, as we hear a dispatcher in the background say some code word nonsense and hear vague war sounds (FAINTLY, according to the closed captioning). He sits up suddenly, alarmed and disoriented. “I took your advice,” says Christina (Michelle Monaghan), the beautiful woman sitting across from him. He does not know who she is or what she’s talking about. Someone opens a can of soda, then a woman spills coffee on his shoe. He reacts to these events as though they are gunshots. Jumpy as hell, this guy. Christina asks if he’s okay and calls him “Sean.” Despite him not answering the question and also looking very much like a rabbit caught in a snare, she presses on with the news she was trying to tell him earlier—she gave notice at her (unknown, but we assume unfulfilling) job. This will not be the last time that Christina deeply under-reacts to how weird “Sean” is being. I know that her easygoingness is meant to be an attractive trait and also paves the way for a happy romantic conclusion, but the way she steamrolls ahead with her personal story when the man she is talking to is clearly having a panic attack sort of makes her seem like an insane narcissist.
The conductor comes by and asks for his ticket, to which he says “Uhhhhhhhh” and carries on looking like the most alarmed man on earth. Christina (who is never asked to provide her own ticket by the way, pretty ladies ride free I assume) reaches over to grab it out of his front pocket and he startles dramatically. “You’re acting a little strange this morning,” she understates. He continues to not answer her questions, and she continues to not be nearly concerned enough about this fact. Finally, solemnly, he speaks: “Look, I can see that you think you know me, but I don’t know who you are. My name is Captain Colter Stevens. I fly helicopters for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.” To which Christina wrinkles her nose adorably and laughs, because Christina’s defining features are 1) being adorable and 2) refusing to accept that the person in front of her is experiencing a psychotic break and/or is on a super secret time travel mission. Woozily, Stevens stands up and walks through the train as they arrive at the next station. We take in several of the passengers in a series of these are clues shots, including grumbling stand-up comedian, a woman who has dropped her files, a sweaty man with glasses who looks ill, and a redhead who chases down a man who dropped his wallet on the way out.
He makes his way back to his seat, where Christina smiles and says “You okay there, Captain?” as though Sean has the absolute strangest sense of humor on earth and this is just a fun little bit he’s doing. This movie is full of maniacs but I think there’s something really wrong with her. “Next stop, Chicago,” says the train announcer. “I KNEW IT!” says me. Stevens lurches to the bathroom, where he looks in the mirror and, unsurprisingly, does not see Jake Gyllenhaal, but rather a different thirty-ish white guy. That’s right, he’s gone full Quantum Leap, and Al is nowhere to be seen. Panicking, he pulls out his wallet and finds an ID—not a drivers license, which I guess is why Sean is on a train—that says “SEAN FENTRESS” and also “TEACHER.” So that’s…efficient. Christina has finally caught on that maybe Sean is having some trouble this morning? And not just having a laugh? She suggests that they get off at the next stop and figure out what’s going on. “Look at me,” she says, “Everything’s gonna be okay.” And then the train explodes, because Christina woke up on the tragically incorrect predictions side of the bed this morning.
Stevens wakes up in a dark, machine-like capsule. “Captain Colter Stevens, this is Beleaguered Castle. Acknowledge transmission,” says Vera Farmiga’s voice. Stevens, understandably, has many questions, but Vera Farmiga is wholly, maddeningly uninterested in answering a single one of them. She continually prompts him to report what he saw but will not say where he is or what’s going on. Finally she asks if he has visual contact and he notices a screen, where Vera Farmiga appears in military uniform, in a command center. She demands that he recall her name, which he cannot, so she does a memory test involving a story and some playing cards, while Stevens struggles and fails to unlatch the strap holding him in to his chair. He says that the last thing he remembers was flying a mission, then waking up on the train, then waking up here, and—quite reasonably—insists that he be briefed. But “clearly relaying instructions to the person on a time-critical mission” is not really the Beleaguered Castle way. After the memory test, he is able to remember that Vera Farmiga’s name is Goodwin. She looks very pleased and says “Welcome back, Captain,” as Jeffrey Wright skulks menacingly behind her.
Stevens asks to call his dad. He asks if anyone has been notified that he is stateside. He is being much calmer and using much less graphic language than I would be. Goodwin brushes these things off as irrelevant and asks “who bombed the train?” Since he does not know, she says he will have to go back and try again. “You will have eight minutes, same as last time.” Now, just in case you were wondering whether a single loop in this movie lasts for eight minutes, no, not a one, so I wouldn’t say we’re dealing with strict precision here. Disappointing, for a military operation. I expect better of you, Goodwin. Stevens objects to being sent back into the “sim test,” but like 100% his concerns, this is irrelevant, and zap, we’re back on the train.
Christina flirtily thanks him for his good advice, someone opens a can, a woman spills coffee on his shoe. He manages to give the conductor his ticket without incident. This time Stevens approaches everything as a simulation. “You’re the pretty girl, the distraction,” he tells Christina knowingly. “Every sim has one.” Christina, you will be shocked to hear, does not seem to register what an incredibly weird thing that is to say. We see the first signs that perhaps Stevens’s military training did not include understated detective work or basic spy craft—when the grumpy stand-up comic complains about the train running behind, he rushes over and grabs him by the collar and demands to know what he’s so worried about being late for. Bit of a “everything looks like a nail” guy, Stevens.
The train stops at the first station, and Red Head chases down Wallet Guy. Stevens frantically searches the train for the bomb, eventually finding in the bathroom vent. He asks Goodwin what to do, but like I said…Goodwin is no Al or Ziggy and he gets no response. He stands at the front of the train and announces that he is transit security and everyone needs to turn off their cell phones, since the bomb has a cell phone detonator. A douchey guy on a laptop says he’s in the middle of a “big deal,” so Stevens, master of subtlety, punches him in the jaw. To her credit, Christina does not appreciate it when he says “he’s no more real than you are,” although instead of responding “What the hell does that mean, is your brain okay” she says “Next time you can drive to work” like she’s…kicking him off public transit? He can’t drive, Christina! He only has a teacher’s license!
The train explodes again, and he’s back in his capsule. “Tell me about the bomb,” says Goodwin. He wants to know what’s going on. Goodwin uses the word irrelevant again. It’s her favorite word! She gives him a couple more tidbits: he’s been in this program for two months, and it is not a simulation that he’s experiencing. He finally says “I need to be briefed” in an adamant enough tone that she bites her lip uncertainly. She requests permission from Jeffrey Wright to give him more information, which he allows. Goodwin explains to Stevens that this morning a commuter train into Chicago exploded, killing everyone aboard. This was the first attack of a series, so the clock is ticking on them uncovering the identity of the bomber before the next one goes off. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he says, accurately. Look for people other than yourself who are acting squirrelly, she suggests.
Back on the train, the coffee-spilling woman apologizes. “Don’t worry about it,” says Christina, which endears her to Stevens. “That was very kind of you,” he says. But…was it? I mean, the coffee wasn’t even on her shoe. To me, believing that you can let someone off the hook for spilling coffee on someone else’s shoe is…main character syndrome at the very least. But it’s working for Stevens, who now realizes that Christina is a real (dead) person and not a simulation. He grills the conductor about whether anyone is behaving strangely on the train this morning. “You’re a little strange,” he says and yes man thank you. He coaxes Christina into playing a “game” of determining who looks suspicious, which she enjoys until we get to the sweaty glasses man, who looks to be of Middle Eastern descent, then she draws the line at racial profiling. But Stevens…he’s got this hammer, you see? And Glasses Man…he just looks so much like a nail. He convinces Christina to get off with him at the earlier stop so he can chase down Glasses Man. His investigation method consists of staring intently at him and then punching him and trying to wrestle his briefcase away. Look, you go to war on terror with the army you have, I guess. In the distance, the train explodes. Notably, this does not end the loop for Stevens. Immediately falling on the tracks and getting hit by a different train, however, does.
Things seem to be breaking down back in the capsule. There’s leaking hydraulic fluid, it’s very cold, and the monitor is glitching. Eventually everything comes back up, and Stevens sees Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright) at Goodwin’s station, which means it’s exposition time. He explains that the brain is like a lightbulb, in that when it turns off, there’s an afterglow—in other words, for a brief time after death there is a charged electromagnetic field and open circuits. The brain also contains a short term memory track that is eight minutes long (or, in this movie’s case, anywhere from three to seven minutes long). Sean Fentress, who died on the train that morning, was the most compatible link for Stevens in terms of gender, body size, and “synaptic maps.” Stevens asks what happens after the eight minutes. “After? Nothing. You cease to exist on the train.” “Well,” Stevens does NOT say at this point, “that’s bullshit because I continued to exist after the train blew up on the last loop.” Seems like relevant information, but I’m not a scientist. “You cannot exist inside the source code outside of Fentress’s eight minutes,” Rutledge says with the confidence of an evil genius. “Yes but I just did though,” Stevens continues to not inform him in any way. The upshot of this conversation is that he cannot save Christina from dying because she is already dead. This, to Stevens, is a huge bummer.
Four loops in, Goodwin has just now decided to tell him where to find a gun in the conductor’s cabin and authorizes him to use whatever force necessary. For people who are in a desperate hurry to prevent a dirty bomb from going off in downtown Chicago they sure take their sweet ass time sharing useful information with their operative. That loop is a bust because Stevens just hammers himself into getting tased and handcuffed. He really, really want to speak to his father and Goodwin really, really wants to stay suspiciously cagey. He attacks two more incorrect suspects because apparently his strategy is to beat the hell out of everyone on the train until one of them is the terrorist. He gets Christina to look up the whereabouts of his “friend” Captain Colter Stevens on her phone, which leads him to discover that his plane went down in Afghanistan and he…is…officially dead. Well, shoot.
“Am I dead?” he asks Goodwin, and I gotta say, the consternated face she makes is not the response you want from that question. “Your condition’s not the issue here,” she says briskly. Ha! At this point, I’m coming around on Goodwin. I think I need Goodwin to help me get my shit together. Stop being such a baby about whether you’re dead or not. Irrelevant. Great stuff. “A part of your brain remains activated,” she tells him reluctantly, and now we discover that Stevens is not really in a capsule, that’s just his brain’s manifestation. She won’t tell him where he actually is, because that’s classified. He is displeased. “You know,” says Rutledge, evil genius-like, “many soldiers would find this preferable to death.” He also berates Goodwin for taking it too easy on him. “No more rest periods.” Yeah, Goodwin! Quit coddling the boy!
Now he is sent back several times in rapid succession, with Rutledge at the helm and Goodwin looking on, increasingly concerned about how mean Daddy is being. Stevens continues to be absolutely terrible at this job into which he’s been shanghaied. After going through almost every other person onboard, he realizes that Wallet Guy left his wallet on purpose so that he would be assumed dead after the explosion because Wallet Guy is also Terrorist Guy. His motivations are, and I quote: “Because the world is hell. But we have a chance to start over in the rubble.” Okay, man. That’s some real white guy villain gibberish, but whatever. At any rate, the terrorist is identified and the mission is complete, but…why is there still half an hour of movie left? Well, I’m glad you asked! That’s because the dubious science at play here is about to get a looooooot more nonsensical.
Stevens begs to be sent back in to the loop so that he can “save” everyone on the original train. Rutledge explains that’s not how it works, but I’m not sure anyone in this operation actually knows how anything works. Goodwin feels sorry for him so she sneaks him back into the loop and locks Rutledge out of the room so he can’t interfere. We also see her visit the actual Stevens, who is unfortunately just a battered torso with a bunch of cords plugged into his head. In the loop, Stevens approaches this round in full rom-com mode, turning the firehose of charm on Christina before dismantling the bomb, quietly handcuffing Terrorist Guy without punching anyone, uniting the entire train in laughter via the grumpy comedian, making a conciliatory phone call to his father (voiced by walking Quantum Leap reference Scott Bakula, who literally says “oh boy” in a conversation that is supposed to be very serious and moving), and then disembarking with Christina to live happily ever after in this alternate version of Chicago. Too bad about hardworking teacher Sean Fentress, who seemed to be on the verge of a fulfilling relationship with the pretty lady from his train but is now dead in the original timeline and bodily hijacked in this one, but endings can only be so happy, you know?
I feel that any concluding thoughts would be irrelevant to this mission.
Time loop solution: Unplug the machine and/or live happily ever after in the alternate timeline
Did I understand/care how the loop worked: Not really/ yeah kinda!
How unpleasant would this loop be for me personally (1-10): Well…I enjoy trains. And I enjoy early morning hustle and bustle. Michelle Monaghan seems like pleasant company. I’ve never been to Chicago and it seems like a great city. But I don’t really want to get blown up every eight minutes or come to the realization that I am a barely-living torso in a tube, so, a toss-up. 5
Dunkin Donuts Glazed Donuts (Copycat) from Alyona’s Cooking
No eating in this one but fortunately there is some glaring product placement in the multiple containers of Dunkin’ Donuts (and zero other evident food items, not a very health-conscious bunch) on the train. I didn’t want to actively reward said product placement, so, copycat recipe it is.
Up next: A bummer of a birthday