Trains on Time: Unstoppable vs. Source Code
WARNING: HELLA SPOILERS AHEAD!
Unstoppable is a based-on-a-true-story story of two regular dudes who prevented a biochemical disaster through the clever use of a spare locomotive. Source Code is the based-on-no-logic-whatsoever story of a regular dude who prevents a biochemical disaster through the clever abuse of space/time.
Neither is really a good movie. Unstoppable (2010), featuring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, is weighted down by its commitment to reality. While the characters are all undoubtably better looking and wittier than their real-life counterparts, they remain essentially average people, with the typical Hollywood short-hand motivators (Washington has two estranged daughters, Pine an estranged wife and kids). That’s not a flaw in itself - too tidy, perhaps, but perfectly acceptable. The biggest strain to credulity is the hotness of their supervisor Connie, played by Rosario Dawson. She’s way too pretty and competent and caring to believe. So it’s for the best that she never shares scene with the dudes (who are stuck on a train); she only communicates with them on the phone.
Source Code (2011) also uses an ostensibly regular guy -- ex-fighter pilot Colter (Jake Gyllenhaal) -- who finds himself in the middle of a mission to stop a terrorist plot. His motive is just as mundane: he needs to wrap up the mission so he can call his estranged dad, but there’s an added wrinkle in that he doesn’t really understand why he’s on this mission. Like the Unstoppable dudes, he also has the voice of a hot, competent chick, his mission supervisor Goodwin, in his ear, but she’s strangely reticent about the details of Colter’s situation.
The movie plunges the audience into the story with no explanation, just as it does to its protagonist. We’re supposed to work through the resulting confusion and mystery together. But it’s obvious from almost the beginning what’s happening, so the effect is somewhat lost. I suppose someone who’s never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, or Lost might be baffled by the premise, as it is sci-fi. But the movie doesn’t get really baffling till the end.
Unstoppable is not an awful movie. The story itself is sort of interesting, in a long-form magazine article kind of way. But it doesn’t translate well to the screen, simply because the only real tension lies in what the exact end will be. And since you’re not familiar with the Tragedy at Kenton or the 2001 “Crazy Eights” Incident, you have a good idea of how it winds up. The plot is centered on logistics: everyone works together to find a way to stop the train before it hits a spot on the track where a derailment is certain. Washington, the veteran, uses his vast railroading knowledge, Pine uses his youthful vigor to get things done, and Dawson is the one with the technology, able to close bridges and flip switches, and work with the authorities. Still, there are some decent action scenes, though neither Washington or Pine look quite as in danger as they could, considering they’re running around on top of a speeding train, rejiggering brakes and uncoupling cars.
If the end is somewhat anticlimactic, well, so is life. That’s why most movies based on real events tend to need some punching up to make them as thrilling as the made-up ones.
Source Code has the opposite problem -- there’s no reality to ground the story to. It’s still a dude on a train. But Colter (Gyllenhaal’s character) isn’t trying to stop the train, or prevent a bomb from exploding. SPOILER The sci-fi twist is that everything has already happened. Colter just needs to re-watch the last eight minutes of a particular passenger’s life to discover who the bomber is, because the bomber intends to strike again. But, Groundhog Day-like, he must do it over and over, until he discovers the vital clue.
This is a pretty good premise. The idea that we could download the lingering short-term memory of a dead person (the so-called "source code") to find out what they saw is cool. But watching eight minutes of eye-cam over and over is dull. The scriptwriters knew that, which is why Colter doesn’t just watch the memories, he actually re-experiences them, like a ghost in Sean-the-dead guy’s body. That’s cool. They should have stopped there, which would have made Source Code a small budget, thinky kind of movie that aimed chiefly toward Colter’s puzzle solving. But Colter is a man of action! So they messed with the premise just a bit more...and jumped the shark. Colter can not only re-experience the eight minutes, he can manipulate the experiences. WTF? So, instead of Colter-as-Sean simply repeating with final moments, hoping to use the benefit of hindsight to gain an epiphany, we have Colter-as-Sean able to do different things: talk to different people, move around on the train, get off on a new stop, and even use a phone to call people at a different point on the space/time continuum.
To be clear, Colter’s mission supervisors warn him that he can’t do this, that the source code isn’t time travel, it’s just TiVo for the soul. But it’s obvious that he can change things. So why do they insist that’s not what’s happening? Actually, they do explain it away by insisting that while the memories may change, the end result won’t alter space/time -- since everyone on the train died, Colter’s tweaks are inconsequential, useful only for finding out what happened. He can’t change Sean’s fate.
An American action hero unable to change fate? No way! Colter, who quickly discovers some weird and very unpleasant facts about his mission (and why he’s the one doing it), soon decides that he can alter the future, at least a future, and possibly more than one. He basically wills the mechanisms of the source code to be time travel and not just TiVo, but the movie fails because none of his ideas or actions make an ounce of sense. Somehow -- and we’re never told how -- Colter figures out how to min/max his last eight-minute window to foil the bomber, reconcile with his own father, and get Sean into a happy relationship, as well as saving the lives of everyone on the train.
And -- somehow -- this all works. We know this because Goodwin (his hottie chick voice-in-the-ear) now living in a world where the train never exploded, receives a text message (!!!) from the now Schrodinger’d Colter (his metaphysical state is very unclear at the end of the movie -- no matter which timeline you pick), telling her what he did and that the source code is way more badass than its designers think. How he could do what the designers couldn’t -- we aren’t told. How the hacking of source code will affect space/time -- we aren’t told. What AT&T charges for text messages from the future, past, or alternative zones in the multiverse -- we aren’t told.
If Unstoppable clung a little too closely to reality for excitement, Source Code drifts too far. Both are frustrating stories to watch. One is just kinda slow (ironically). The other simply makes no damn sense.1
Score:
Unstoppable: Meh.
Source Code: FAIL...Also, get off my lawn!
1 An addendum to my review-turned-rant: Source Code was directed by Duncan Jones, who also did Moon, his still-flawed, but way better-acted debut. The difference in style and tone of these two movies was so great I never suspected they shared a director until IMDB set me straight.
Why did I ask IMDB about Source Code anyway? Because I was curious to see what reactions people had to the plausibility of the premise. What I found on the forums was a really interesting split among viewers, half of who insisted that the source code in the movie was described as experiential “TiVo”, and the other half who were just as adamant that the Source Code was described as rebooting an alternate reality of the final eight minutes of a life, which would explain why changes in the timeline were possible. The first problem with that is that I don’t remember any single character explaining it this way (The line used to justify this reading most seems to be Goodwin’s telling Colter that “This is not a simulation.” But I understood that to mean that he wasn’t in a training exercise; his mission was real.).
The second problem with that explanation is that if Colter is discovering things in an alternate reality, who cares? An alternate reality is by definition alternate. Different. Not the same. Identifying the bomber in one reality in no means that you’ve found the bomber in every reality. That’s what it means to have alternate realities. In any case, I still think that the movie adheres to the TiVo explanation, and the forums are merely rife with people willing to ascribe better logic to the movie than the movie’s own writers did. In conclusion, get off my lawn, srsly.