Vera Farmiga is awesome.
I had to get that off my chest. Feels good to finally say it.
I read the screenplay to this movie a few month ago, so I didn't go into it with a blank slate. No matter. It was great.
Could you elaborate on, "great"?
Sure.
Clever set up. Slow build. The confusion of the character came across and through to the audience, or at least to me. Did I say Vera Farmiga is awesome? Good. She is. Michelle Monaghan and Jake Gyllenhaal were pretty good too.
I think one of the hardest parts of science fiction is creating a world that's believable (even though it's not possible) and then having the guts to stick to the rules of the world you've created. Source Code managed to do that pretty well, but fell short for me, only, I believe because I read the story first. Science Fiction is a wondrous playground for the mind. It's a world made for the pages of a book. Details, inventions, make-believe, open-ended. Bringing the pages to life is a difficult task. My imagination had already built the sets and had painted these characters a certain way. It's always hard to see the movie after you've read the book, but I would argue this is especially true with Science Fiction.
Also, I felt the one thing the story lacked was real, effectual stakes for the characters. Without giving too much away, except for the possibility of an impending doom on an unwitting Chicago, there wasn't really anything at stake during each iteration of the sequence. Succeed or fail, it didn't really matter. I thought they have tied it closer to the same reality through and through to give more weight to each iteration and higher stakes for each of the characters.
But that's a bit nit-picky.
It was a great, inventive ride and I'm looking forward to whatever Ben Ripley is writing next.
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Directed by: Duncan Jones
Written by: Ben Ripley
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal (Colter Stevens), Michelle Monaghan (Christina Warren), Vera Farmiga (Colleen Goodwin), Jeffrey Wright (Dr. Rutledge), Michael Arden (Derek Frost)
