I knew Source Code was a sci-fi movie, but I think if I had known that it really was full-on science fiction, instead of just with the trappings, you understand, I would have pushed myself to see it sooner. As it is, there’s hardly any time left to recommend it to people, what with the summer movie season having started yesterday. And that’s downright unfortunate, because it’s the kind of workmanlike, personal sci-fi story that people should ought to see, and that really should ought to be made more often in the first place.

Jake Gyllenhal plays his affable everyman self, military edition, attached to a top-secret project called the Source Code.[1] Using the brain patterns of a train-bombing victim, the project coordinators are able to place him into the last eight minutes of that man’s life, again and again, to determine the identity of the bomber before he can strike again. All of which is enough by itself to make for a rollicking good sci-fi / action movie, but then they went and focused on Captain Stevens’ experience in the virtual reality: his growing attachment to his fellows[2], the physical and mental agony of each failure, and his rapidly growing disillusionment with… ah, but that would be telling too much.

The important thing is, they’re telling a much deeper story than the one that might have fit in an hour of zippy television in the Seven Days, or, yes, Quantum Leap vein (and if you manage to catch Scott Bakula’s cameo, you’re a better person than I was). It doesn’t strike me as being among the very best genre movies of the (well, previous, now) decade, and here I’m thinking of Children of Men. But this is a new decade, and it’s the best one so far, plus also it’s every bit as good as another recent example of the personal sci-fi genre I’ve seen (which I shall avoid mentioning here because the comparison could be spoilery to either film), even if it didn’t manage to live up to a global-scale story that is among my favorite movies ever.

[1] Caps implied every time the name of the project-slash-device is mentioned.
[2] Especially, it must be admitted, the pretty one sitting across from him.