SOURCE CODE - REVIEW

Philip K Dick film adaptations come and go. Usually we get either the Good (Minority Report), the Bad (Impostor) or the Silly (Next). Here though, Duncan Jones appears to have found a good balance.

The Moon director being no stranger to sci-fi flicks about guys stuck somewhere trying to make sense of a crazy, brain-twisting puzzle, Source Code seemed like the perfect project. As outlandish as the Moon story was, he made it work and you soon forgot you were watching a Sam Rockwell twin movie with a cute Kevin Spacey robot. With Source Code, he also manages to make a potentially lame throwaway sci-fi B movie into a very decent A-list thriller.

Jake Gyllenhaal is good fun, as are Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga, the whole thing is entertaining, well paced and pretty gripping throughout. Plus it looks fine and has some neat Dickian twists and turns here and there.

Annoyingly, it trips on its own shoelaces near the end as Russell Peters takes over with some awkward, cringe-worthy stand-up and we're given a big twist which probably makes less sense the more you think about it.

And I thought magic key hats were weird...

(see Adjustment Bureau review)

The film really could have done with a better script and a more focused Third Act, but on the whole: this is good, solid sci-fi like we don't get enough of these days.