SOURCE CODE

Tasty…but not quite orgasmic.

Science Fiction as a genre regularly calls into question various thoughts and philosophies on mankind and our existence/place in the universe. 2001: A Space Odyssey called into question the relationship between violence and evolution, Blade Runner looks at the essence of life and identity itself and Alien is a superb allegory about the fears of sex and STIs (the constant imagery of penetration and egg laying resulting in death).

"It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?"

-as in that popular song by The Killers

So where does Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones - who directed the wonderful and stupidly low budget British sci-fi flick Moon - fit into the delicious space pie that is Science Fiction? The answer is, it doesn’t. The reason: it is an action thriller with a sci-fi backdrop, very much in line with films like Battle: Los Angeles (I swear to God they must have thought that making it really loud all the time would distract from the fact it’s just a 2 hour advert for the US Marines). What I mean is that the film adheres to the rules of the action thriller, but has various sci-fi elements to it, lacking that real interrogation of human nature. Example: Battle: Los Angeles is an action/war film, except with aliens instead of people.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a soldier trapped in another man’s body (a man by the name of Steven Fentress), forced to re-live the last 8 minutes of that man’s life leading up to a bomb exploding on a train. This is made possible by what is called the Source Code - a secret military program. He does this because the bomber of the train has threatened another attack on the city of Chicago and the authorities need to identify him before he can carry out this plan. Each time Colter fails to identify the bomber and the bomb goes off, he is thrown back into reality before being thrown back to the beginning of the 8 minutes again.

A sort of Groundhog Day scenario.

I'm sorry Bill, magic rodents just don't cut it anymore...

This kind of premise is definitely the sort of direction you would expect Duncan Jones to go in, and he has done very well with the script he has been given. You can definitely see the flair of intrigue and examination that made Moon such a great film. The only problem with it is that the action thriller part of it drives the story too fast to truly explore the implications of alternate realities and the effect of death on the human psyche (Colter dies at least 7 times).

So when he begins his investigation, every time interrogating a different person, everyone is a suspect. Very much a standard find the bomb and piece the clues together to find the terrorist and stop the bomb setup that is screaming for Jack Bauer to jump in and torture everyone before fucking everything up and killing everyone whilst somehow managing to save the day. But there’s one more piece of Hollywood tripe that drags down these interesting, high concept ideas. A woman.

Megan Fox is essentially a plot device in every film...she's just terrible.

Ah yes, the woman. The female of the species. The plot device for writers who need to stretch an action film to fill the average 90 minute running time for a film. Again, however, this could have been an interesting idea to toy with, as she essentially falls for Colter’s personality even though he is not in his own body. A serious WTF!? kind of situation. But no, ignore that, instead he has to save a woman he falls in love with after knowing her for a total of about 45 minutes…

No internet blog is complete without a picture of a cat...

This film has Hollywood’s greasy, fat, money grabbing hands all over it and is throwing in all of the usual action thriller tropes to take concepts down to the lowest common denominator in order to sell it to people who read The Sun and watch The X Factor. They are still assuming the audience are a bunch of idiots.

There is however, a glimmer of hope in all of this. Duncan Jones has done superbly well with the script he has been given to make a thoroughly enjoyable action thriller that raises enough questions from the sci-fi side of things to get the old brainbox thinking. Adding to the slowly growing trend of action films that actually make you think (do I really have to mention Inception?). Audiences are getting tired of the same old shit and want something with a bit of a brain to it.

So, 2 films in and Duncan Jones has a pretty impressive track record. The outstandingly observant and interesting Moon followed by the pulse pounding action thriller Source Code…all we need now is for him to mix the two together with his next film and he very well could be making the next Blade Runner - a great action film with a great big juicy philosophical sci-fi brain behind it.

Mmm...tasty philosophy...

SUBMARINE

As a teenager, we all secretly wish we were French.

The relationship between Britain and France is largely based on stereotypes. The French - wearing berets and onion/garlic necklaces whilst smoking and looking like a pretentious dick, and the British - drunken football fanatics who like to glass you in the face or charming Hugh Grant types who like to get glassed in the face. Either way, there has always been an underlying PLAYFUL (not racist) hatred.

Much like these guys really.

However, there are qualities from each nationality that are endearing. The French provide that certain ‘je ne c’est quoi’ that makes the films they make impossibly chic and stylish and the British are masters of awkward comedy and social drama, where you end up giggling like a school girl whilst writhing in your seat in embarrassment - as though your parents have just walked in on you masturbating - followed by a brief cry at the social injustices that befall the characters. It’s these two qualities that are merged together by Submarine that make it very different from the average British film.

Oliver Tate is coming of age and trying to find out who he is. Yet more importantly, he’s trying to get his leg over. Enter Jordana, a girl who is completely alien and yet so familiar. Throw into the mix the fact that he’s trying to save his parents marriage as well and you’ve got a pretty standard set up for a very British film.

But here is where the film cracks out the snails and dons the beret. The film itself is very French in the way it has been constructed. The playfulness of the French New Wave is infused in every sequence, yet the films director, Richard Ayoade (better known as Moss from TV’s The IT Crowd), owns the style in a more controlled manner as to avoid the anti-narrative tangents that the 60s film movement often divulged into. Montages of romance are interspliced with awkward family conversations and ridiculous slapstick, teenage humour with some rather disjointed interactions that can so easily cause a film to become thinly spread and schizophrenic - thankfully, this is not the case.

This is what could have happened...

This technique of filming is intrinsically linked to the fact the story is entirely told from Oliver’s point of view. Based on a novel that speaks entirely in the first person, the films construct becomes the visual representation of the internal thoughts he has. A line of voiceover (a regular occurrence in the film) sums it all up - “I often wish there was a film crew following my every move. Someone making a documentary about a prominent thinker who struggled with unspeakable loss.” The visual style of the film is how he imagines this documentary would be, and this calls into question just how British Oliver really is. If he is British, why does the film as told from his perspective remind me so much of the French New Wave?

This brings me back to the opening statement about teenagers wanting to be French. The most relatable part of the film, what makes it so charming, is the sheer pretentious arrogance that possesses Oliver. It is an arrogance that we have all embraced at some point in our lives around his tender age of 15. We’ve gone through phases, we’ve tried to be like our role models, we’ve tried to get laid, ALL of us have at one point, been like Oliver in our own way.

Of course I am now implying that the French are pretentious and arrogant. Of course I don’t mean that. For one thing, it helps them have a certain look like this...

"Ooh la la"

...and the image we Brits get across is something like this...

"Hang on Dave, I'll take you to hospital in a minute. I FOUND FLOOR CHIPS!"

So is this film’s rich blend of French and British (what I like to call Fritish) a mere mark of the stereotypical view we have of the French? Or is it just a heavily influenced film that has given a breath of Fresh air to the usual British film? Who cares? It’s a real gem of a film and not to be missed.

Which leads me to another point. Recently, we are seeing British directors coming into their own to make new and innovative films that better the latest Hollywood bank breaking projects. Duncan Jones with Moon, Edgar Wright with Shaun of the Dead, Gareth Edwards with Monsters and one I’m particularly excited about seeing, Joe Cornish with Attack The Block (Released May 13^th). All of which have a hand in making some of the newer Hollywood films. We are seeing an uprising of British directors looking to take Hollywood by storm, to turn their tired and formulaic paint by numbers filmmaking into something new and great, to breathe life into a lagging film industry struggling with recession and piracy. I for one, am very excited for what could come around in the next few years.

As the French might say - “Vive la Révolution!”