Monday Review by Margie: Source Code (2011)

Margie Cracken is a guest blogger for StrangeCultureBlog.com, her style & taste are not typical to the Film Blog Community. You can read more about Margie here.

Michelle Monaghan and Jake Gyllenhaal, Source Code

I don't know why I rented Source Code. The only thing I can guess is that I saw that the movie took place on a train, and I was intrigued.

Young people these days do not seem to appreciate trains.

It is a well known fact that there is nothing quite as romantic as a train. It is a pity that people rarely take the train anymore. I've read articles that talk about the possibility of high speed trains going in in various parts of the country. In fact, I think there was just a story the other day about some train in Chicago going over 100 miles per hour. A train that travels the speed of the bullet is about as romantic as this unromantic movie, Source Code.

I don't know much about film editing, but I do know a thing or two about story editing. And somehow, this film is one of those kooky creativity things that Hollywood is always trying to pull.

Whatever happened to good stories? It's as if the guy who wrote this movie came up with a good ten minute story about a guy on a train and realized he didn't have anything else. So he got his mimeograph machine out...correction, being a modern man, I presume he used a photocopier...and copies the story 6 or 7 times, staples them together, and then just marked up different sections to make the story seem a little different each time.

I must say, I did not really understand what was going on with the main character being inside that weird box in between the train sequences. I doubt the actors did either, because they seemed so confused themselves. If I were talking to someone on a TV who was telling me to get back inside of an exploding train over and over again, I think I would simply go batty. The truth is, this movie did make me go batty. What a waste.

I understand that the film is trying to be psychological, but clearly that did not happen. The author unfortunately must be hanging around the wrong type of crowd. It's a pity no one told him his story was no good.

If the writer or director asked me about this film, I would have told them to go back to the drawing board. Or maybe, I'd have told him to go to trade school, or get a job at McDonalds.

For an example of a much better psychological train movie, I would recommend Hitchcok's The Lady Vanishes. In The Lady Vanishes their is an elderly lady, Miss Froy, on the train who all the passengers say never existed. Yet, beautiful Iris Henderson, played by the always beautiful Margaret Lockwood, knows Miss Froy was not a hallucination. Now that is a story. It plays out with intrigue, plot twist, and splendid characters. There's no man talking to a lady on a TV. There's no redo to try the scenes again.

No, this film is no Source Code, and Source Code is no The Lady Vanishes.