The titular "Source Code" is a military program in which severely wounded soldier Colter Stevens' (Jake Gyllenhaal) consciousness is sent back in time, into the body of a victim of a train bombing for the last eight minutes of his life. The goal is to use those eight minutes to determine who the bomber is, based on... people looking shifty, and/or people looking Middle Eastern, basically. Obviously, eight minutes isn't really sufficient time to solve a crime of that magnitude, so a confused Colter is Groundhog Day'd back into those eight minutes over and over and over again against his will, until by process of elimination he is able to find the bomber. Along the way, he falls in love with his avatar's seatmate (Michelle Monaghan) and even finds the time to call his estranged father to tell him (in his avatar's voice) that Colter loved him. Aww.

As the story goes on, Colter's focus is split between his duty to find the bomber and his growing personal commitment to save his new crush. But can he do both? Can he go back in time to save a girl who's already dead (and who thinks he is someone else entirely) by somehow creating an alternate universe where they both can live happily ever after together through sheer force of crush butterflies? The movie prides itself on that being a very interesting conundrum, and many people clearly have found that it is, but for me, it was laughably sappy, and it was bad sci-fi writing.

All of the sci-fi in the movie is explained away in bad mad-scientist clichés from the Source Code's vaguely evil creator (played by Jeffrey Wright), who, when asked by Colter how such a thing is possible, just kind of rambles on in egregiously amateurish "Well, the universe is elastic" inanities. The movie wants all the fun of time travel (and all the cool train explosions that come with it!) without having to deal with any of the intelligence good sci-fi requires, and every step of the way it's lazy and cheap. Even the overarching themes -- the military is evil and exploitative of its soldiers; love conquers all; the human cost of playing God; don't be racist about dark-skinned people (they might not all be terrorists, apparently) -- are weakly held up by two-dimensional characters and a sheer absence of a logical, well-written foundation of any kind. But hey, explosions sure are fun, and this movie has like 50 of them. It's the best movie of the year!

Tell us what you thought of Source Code, then see our list of the best and worst time travel movies ever!

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