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100Director Duncan Jones achieves a strange and winning amalgam, a gripping action film that also works as poetry.
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91This is hair-raising, clever and winning entertainment. Even if his protagonists aren't entirely what they seem to be or think they are, Mr. Jones is, it's increasingly clear, the real thing.
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91Showcases Jones' ability to provide ample entertainment value with sharply drawn characters in a minimalist setting.
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88An ingenious thriller that comes billed as science fiction, although its science is preposterous.
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83Among all the chess-piece players on the board, the star is the only one who really builds a solid emotional foundation for his character.
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80Source Code is a formally disciplined work -- a triumph of movie syntax -- made with rhythm and pace. Jones, unlike most commercial directors, accelerates the tempo without producing visual gibberish. [11 April, 2011 p. 88]
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80The first film in a while to have a decent heart while quickening your pulse.
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80Everything we learn about Stevens and Christina and Goodwin by the end of the film comes from their actions, not their words. That lends Source Code an elusive, almost arty shimmer beneath its glossy, action-movie surface.
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80None of this makes any sense if you think about it, but the idea is so much fun that thinking about it may be your last impulse.
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80What's really cool about the film - in addition to Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as Stevens - is how Jones makes sure that we don't know any more than Stevens does, right up till the end.
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Mar 29, 201180A propulsive ride worth your popcorn dollar, not for its preposterous genre tinkering but for its refreshingly humanist take on a high-concept gimmick.
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80It's a crackerjack ride, shot and edited for maximum discombobulation.
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80An exciting, intellectually stimulating science-fiction thriller which also connects emotionally. Everyone involved earns a promotion to the premiership.
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78It's not nearly as complex and eerily existential as the director's debut, "Moon," but in its own way it's an even more satisfying time slice of identity-scrambled sci-fi.
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Apr 6, 201175The psychological payoffs outweigh any implausibilities. And what's the harm in logging off your network for a few hours to indulge in some good old-fashioned science fiction?
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75In Source Code, the new thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal, "Groundhog Day" goes metaphysical. Some people, I know, will argue that "Groundhog Day" was already metaphysical. Perhaps, but compared with "Source Code," it's "Caddyshack."
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75As popcorn entertainment, it's right on schedule.
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75A fun ride of a sci-fi thriller with terrific romantic chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan.
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75Michelle Monaghan's clowning response to her boyfriend's sudden histrionics lends the drama a giddy fizz.
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75A taut, mostly well-crafted race against the clock that combines the time-loop conceit of "Groundhog Day" and the postwar paranoia of "The Manchurian Candidate."
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75A high-octane mind game best enjoyed by following a key character's advice: "The Source Code is a gift. Don't squander it by thinking."
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75Working from a tight script by Ben Ripley, Jones creates scary, hairy, high-octane tension. Disbelief? Suspended, until the logic lapses kick in later. It's a small price to pay for a ride that starts at wild and accelerates from there.
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75For a while it's the rare film that-in the mold of the first "Matrix" movie and "Inception," although on a more modest scale than either-mixes heady puzzles with gripping suspense.
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75I'm still not sure what "source code" means here. I suspect the actors, the director, and the screenwriter haven't a clue either. But the thing keeps you watching.
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75Sitting through Source Code is like watching a chef coax a beautiful soufflé into perfect shape for 80 minutes, then drop a bowling ball on it.
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75Source Code is a contraption, no doubt. But it works.
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75Well paced and energetic; it's unlikely to bore anyone.
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75White-knuckle fun.
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75Duncan Jones, director of the very fine and very paranoid "Moon," makes this seemingly silly situation work, building tension over 93 minutes.
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Mar 31, 201170Source Code has a resonance that too many contemporary thrillers lack. Gyllenhaal invests Stevens with the simmering anger and grinning charm familiar to the genre, but also with a real sense of vulnerability.
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70In crucial ways, Source Code, written by Ben Ripley, recalls "Moon," Mr. Jones's accomplished feature debut about a solitary astronaut played by Sam Rockwell. Source Code is bigger, shinier, pricier.
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70With a twisty, mind-bending plot that frequently changes direction and occasionally overreaches, Source Code wouldn't work at all without a cast with the determination and ability to really sell its story.
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70A Hitchcockian thriller with a bit of "Unstoppable" and a little "Unknown," Source Code is a pulse-pounding flick.
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63The script by Ben Ripley doesn't come up with enough obstacles to throw in the hero's path, and his budding romance with the doomed Christina feels more like a studio mandate than an organic development.
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60Based on its thrillingly fractured first half - not to mention "Moon" in its entirety - Jones seems much smarter than he allows the film to be in the end. It wriggles out of its own intriguing puzzle.
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60What begins as a tense, inventive suspense film becomes, to paraphrase Doctor Who, a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, mushy-wushy mess. That's decidedly NOT fantastic.
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60The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.
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50It is a tremendous downer when the second half of the movie shirks logic, defies its own established principles and raises more questions than it answers.
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50Gyllenhaal is particularly unsuited to this role, his saucer eyes flashing from calm to crazed.
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Mar 14, 201150Solid execution and some provocative ideas can't save Source Code from a fatal hubris, as it thinks itself far more clever than it actually is and assumes it's earned emotions at which it's only hinted.
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Mar 31, 201140Somewhere under all that bloat is the greatest short subject of all time.