Film Review | Source Code (2011)

Watching Source Code is a bit like tucking into a juicy sirloin steak with a tough, fibrous line of fat running through it. There's a lot to like there, with a great many mouthfuls to enjoy without issue. But there's also niggling in the back of your mind that unappetising gristly bit that you try as hard as you can to avoid, even ignore. You have one spoiled bite. Then another. You try and eat round it. But when the meal's over, despite all those unsullied morsels you enjoyed throughout, you keep coming back to that unfortunate thread of adipose material that left you feeling not entirely satisfied with what had the potential to be a really great dish.

Let us first, then, look at the meat. Source Code's story, and the concept behind it, is generally pretty good. Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) awakens on a train unaware of how he got there sitting opposite a woman who knows him as Sean Fentress. Colter soon discovers that his reflection is that of someone else, but before he is able to find out anything further, the train explodes. Colter then wakes up strapped into a dark capsule, where he discovers from Captain Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) that the crash he just experienced happened earlier that day, and that he is part of an experimental military operation known as "Source Code". Colter's consciousness was transported into that of a passenger's - Sean's - for the final eight minutes of his life, with the aim of Colter discovering who is responsible for blowing up the train in order to avert further attacks in the future.

So far, so complex. But Duncan Jones' direction from the outset keeps things moving at a pleasing and steady pace whilst at the same time making the whole thing believable. You feel that Jones really hits his stride when depicting Colter's experiences outside of his transportation to the same eight minutes on the train. The design and nature of the bleak capsule Colter inhabits, with its harsh structural features and intrusive video and computer screens, has strong echoes of Gilliam's post-apocalyptic world Bruce Willis experiences in 1995's Twelve Monkeys. In fact, Jones' influence from a wide range of science fiction and beyond - from Inception to Groundhog Day - is apparent throughout Source Code, and the film is all the stronger for it. The director takes inspiration from respected sources, whilst at the same time crafting a fantastical concept that is original and fresh. Jones' first feature, the highly acclaimed Moon, is one that has so far (shamefully) passed me by, but on the strength of his handling of many elements on show here I feel all the more compelled to seek it out sooner rather than later.

Gyllenhaal too must not be undersold. His performance as the former army helicopter pilot thrown into a disorienting and perplexing scenario of which he has no recollection of choosing to be a part, shows diversity that perhaps has only been hinted at before. His previous roles, from romantic drama in Brokeback Mountain to action hero in Prince Of Persia, come together in his portrayal of Colter to provide a satisfying and genuine mix of humour, tension and pugnacity.

The supporting cast also do well, with both Farmiga as Captain Goodwin and Jeffrey Wright as Dr. Rutledge, the creator of the Source Code program, giving strong and memorable turns. Farmiga and Wright are key to the success of the darker and more mysterious aspects of the film; Wright's continuous use of a single crutch providing a unnerving quirk to his character. It is Goodwin's appearances on Colter's video screens that provide some of the film's most enduring sequences, however; the extreme close ups on Farmiga's face make her presence intrusive on both Colter and the audience, and the methods she uses to help bring the disoriented soldier back from his trips to the exploding train - asking him to recall series of cards from a story, playing bird calls into his capsule - have an unsettlingly sinister psychological edge to them.

Unfortunately, whilst there's a lot to like about Source Code, this is largely where the good stuff comes to an end. Michelle Monaghan is fine enough, if somewhat forgettable, in her role as Christina, Colter's perpetual travelling partner on the train. But the fact that her character, other than sharing some wonderfully shot slow-mo explosion scenes with Gyllenhaal, never feels anything much more than peripheral in the film as a whole means that the romantic thread between Christina and Colter largely falls flat.

The biggest failing, however, is the film's handling of the human side of its story. Whilst it's hard to address this without giving away large chunks of the story it's fair to say that, whilst Gyllenhaal makes his character sympathetic, many of the more emotional elements of his story regularly slip too far into melodrama and become swamped in pathos. As more and more about Colter's circumstances in reality (as opposed to on the train) is revealed, this becomes more and more of a problem. The second half of the film also has an ill-fitting anti-war undertone with more than a hint of schmaltzy Americana, which simply feels stale and tacked onto the science-fiction premise at the core of the film.

Ultimately, as stated previously, there really is a lot to enjoy within Source Code. Its sci-fi credentials are solid, and whilst it never reaches the heights of Nolan's Inception, it sits pleasingly a few steps below in the ranks of the cerebral blockbuster. In the end, however, Source Code leaves you feeling as though it never quite fully realises the potential that its concept holds. A little less preoccupation with pushing a message onto the audience, and a little more focus on both the darker mystery-thriller aspects that work so well throughout the film and the ingenious science-fiction concept at its nucleus, and this could have been an excellent film. As it is, the flaws are there, and noticeable enough to make it just very good.

7/10

Film Review | Love And Other Drugs (2010)

Love them or hate them, one thing that is certainly true of romantic comedies is that you know exactly where you are with them in terms of characterisation and plot development. Of all the contemporary popular film genres, the rom-com is the most reliably safe. Directors and actors remain firmly on the rails to produce middle-of-the-road cinema that they know has a definite audience who paid to see a film that will offer unchallenging viewing and nothing coming out of left field. True, straying from this tried and tested formula can sometimes produce surprisingly pleasing results - just watch (500) Days Of Summer - but it can also hatch cinematic turkeys that can't even provide the vanilla comedy of their unreservedly formulaic cousins. And whilst Love And Other Drugs isn't a complete and utter disaster, it ultimately veers firmly into the latter scenario.

Set in the mid '90s, the film tells the story of Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal), a salesman for drugs company Pfizer whose success comes from being one of the first people to sell viagra to medical practitioners. After talking his way into shadowing an influential doctor (Hank Azaria) Jamie meets Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway), a patient suffering from early onset Parkinson's. The two quickly form an almost entirely physical relationship, but this soon begins to develop into something more complex.

Technically, I suppose, Love And Other Drugs is a romantic comedy-drama (or "dramedy" for those whose time is too precious to say two words where one can be portmanteaued into existence) as it is clear some sections are there to make you laugh, and others are definitely not. One of the key problems in the film is that of balance; when providing comedy the scenes are simply not funny enough, or awkardly juxtaposed with pathos that makes you unsure of whether you should be laughing or not. Equally, when tackling more serious scenes, the emotion can seem limp - and at times almost completely absent - and the film quickly becomes tedious.

The reason behind this imbalance is that neither Gyllenhaal nor Hathaway's characters are very nice people, which makes it hard to care much about the things that happen to them. Soon after we are first introduced to Gyllenhaal's Jamie he is promptly fired from his job in a top-of-the-range electrical shop for unashamedly shagging his boss's girfriend in the stockroom. Receiving a punch in the face for his troubles, Jamie promptly reminds his irate former employer that he's owed a significant amount in commission and runs out of the store, flirting with a female customer all the while. Jamie comes across as shallow and arrogant from the start, which makes it very hard to care about - or indeed believe in - his emotional journey with Maggie later on. Gyllenhaal has proven in the past that he can deliver when it comes to challenging roles, but here his performance simply doesn't provide the emotional depth or connection with the audience needed to make his character either credible or appealing.

Anne Hathaway too struggles to lift Maggie off the screen, leaving her a collection of rom-com and tearjerker clichés that largely come across as irritating. The fact that Maggie is suffering from a disease rarely associated with the younger generation would seem a fairly easy way of generating sympathy for her; instead, Maggie comes across for most of the film as something of a self-obsessed bitch. Granted, suffering from Parkinson's at such a young age can't be easy, but there are so few moments in the film where Maggie shows even a modicum of care for anyone other than herself that it's hard not to consciously detach yourself from the character entirely. As a result of this, the handful of scenes where Hathaway does begin to bring some depth to her character's condition are rendered entirely useless.

With the two main characters so undesirable, it's not difficult to see why the story becomes tedious fairly quickly. After initially seeming like an extended fling, Jamie and Maggie's relationship soon moves into more involved territory (after much preening and self-obsession from both characters), but this shift is both hard to believe and hard to care about. By the film's halfway point I'd lost virtually all interest in their relationship: when Maggie begins to self-destruct, struggling to cope with the hopelessness of her incurable condition, I genuinely wasn't bothered whether Hathaway and Gyllenhaal's characters stayed together or broke off their relationship. The incredibly clichéd rom-com climax to the film, which seems somewhat out of place following the relatively less conventional format of that which has preceded it, might have felt a bit more disappointing had my attention still been held at that point. As it is, I wasn't all that surprised - it just felt like the filmmakers had given up hope on the film a bit later than I had.

Supporting characters are either achingly out of place (Josh Gad as Jamie's brother Josh feels like he's wandered out of a Judd Apatow film) or painfully underutilised - Jamie's sales partner Bruce (Oliver Platt) appears to be a character with a story potentially much more interesting and affecting than that of Jamie and Maggie, but sadly is relegated to the position of underdeveloped side character.

Considering Love And Other Drugs is based upon a non-fiction book, it's a shame that so many elements in the film are lacking in either dimension or authenticity. Love And Other Drugs has all the ingredients to potentially make it a refreshing and original take on the rom-com genre. But with misfire after misfire in terms of plot and script coupled with lacklustre performances by the leads, this doesn't even have the quick and easy bubblegum cinema charm of safer offerings in the genre. If there was a cinematic equivalent of viagra, Love And Other Drugs would require a lengthy prescription, delivering as it does a consistently disappointing performance.

3/10