Movie Review: Source Code

Judging by the preview, Source Code (2011, PG-13) seemed like a generic action flick with stereotypical characters and plot. It looked like it could be worth seeing but not a ground- breaking cinematic achievement. As it turned out, it wasn’t a terribly ground-breaking achievement, but it was much better than expected.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an American Army helicopter pilot, his last memory is on the battle field in Afghanistan. He wakes up on a commuter train in Chicago and realizes he has the identity of one of the train’s passengers. Thoroughly confused, he tries to figure out what is happening. Eight minutes after waking up, a bomb goes off in the train and Stevens wakes up again in some kind of pod. A military woman named Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) speaks to him through a monitor and explains that he needs to go back and find the bomber. Stevens wakes up again, and relives the same eight minutes. But the bomb goes off again, sending Stevens back to the pod with no new information. Stevens demands to know what is happening. Goodwin and Dr. Rutledge (the scientist in charge) explain that he is part of a project that can put someone in another person's consciousness during the last eight minutes of their life. He is not time traveling, just living the last eight minutes of someone’s life. Simply deactivating the bomb would not change anything, but figuring out who the bomber is would help the government find the bomber in real life. Stevens lives the same eight minutes over and over trying to find the bomber, but he finds himself falling in love with Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan),  the woman traveling with the man in whose consciousness he is living.

The story line in this movie is pretty interesting; it’s almost as if Groundhog Day (1993) and Die Hard (1988) were blended together to form Source Code. You relive the same events over and over until you’ve memorized everything about the people around you, all while trying to stop a very clever terrorist.  There was some good potential for the movie to get boring since you are viewing the same eight minutes repeatedly. However, like Groundhog Day, it keeps showing a little bit more information each time Stevens returns to the train. This gives the audience ample opportunity to see new things and try to figure out who the terrorist is along with Stevens. There is just enough information revealed about the story as it progresses so that the audience is not left bewildered, nor is there so much revealed that the audience figures everything out too quickly.  The movie develops in such a way that it keeps the audience guessing and yet the twists and surprises are not completely unexpected.

Source Code is an action movie, but it has a great theme to it; life is precious and should be lived to its fullest. Stevens is by every means a military soldier, but he is intent on trying to save the lives on the train despite being told that they are already dead in the real world. I thought this was refreshing since even protagonist military officers are often portrayed as combat-driven war machines. When in the pod communicating with Goodwin, Stevens is generally a by-the-book officer. On the train, he’s still a good person with no real intention of hurting anyone, but he is willing to use force to find the terrorist. Military officers do have souls and feelings for people, contrary to how the media and cinema often depict them. Stevens asks Christina several times just before the bomb goes off, “What would you do if you knew you only had one minute to live?” This is a bit cliché, but is applicable to the theme and the concerns Stevens is dealing with each time he asks.

This really was an exciting movie and was lots of fun. It’s worth watching at least once. It may even be worth a second viewing so you’ll know what to look for since you would know the end from the beginning.  Definitely see Source Code, its more intelligent than your average action movie.

Movie Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Generally, when a non-movie media become popular some Einstein in Hollywood thinks there needs to be a movie based off of it. These have varying degrees of success. Movies based on books usually do okay; comic books tend to be hit or miss; and TV show movies tend to be pretty bad. They have yet to make a good movie based on a video game, with the worst probably being the Super Mario Bros. movie (1993). Disney had some success with making Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl(2003) which was based on the Disneyland attraction. Evidently, Disney thought that with the success thatPirates of the Caribbean brought them, a similar production based on a long running video game series would be good idea.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) is set in a romanticized ancient Persia. In the prologue, King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) adopts an orphaned street urchin, Dastan, to rear along with his other sons. King Sharaman thought Dastan was worthy of becoming nobility because Dastan defended another boy who was being beaten and then escaped by running around on rooftops. Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) grows to become a reputed warrior and prince. After receiving information that the Holy City of Alamut is supplying weapons to the enemies of Persia, Dastan’s adoptive brothers Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) and Tus (Richard Coyle) prepare to attack the city. While attacking the city, Dastan comes into possession of a strange dagger. King Sharaman stops the attack and arranged for the marriage of Tus to Alamut’s princess, Tamina (Gemma Arterton). Dastan is later framed for the mysterious murder of King Sharaman. Dastan escapes with Princess Tamina who tells him about the dagger’s power to send its wielder back in time by a few seconds. Dastan and Tamina set out to discover who is behind the false rumors about Alamut, the murder of King Sharaman, who is after the time-altering dagger and why.

Similar to Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is full of silly characters, over the top action scenes, and special effects. The only Prince of Persia game I’ve ever played was in 1989 on an Apple II computer. The storyline there wasn’t any more complicated than that of Super Mario Bros. game in 1985: save the princess. Other Prince of Persia games have been released, but I don’t know how the movie compares, as I have never played the more recent ones.

Dastan is a painfully generic hero character. He’s inherently good and incorruptible; he isn’t challenged by moral dilemmas, he just does the right thing because he’s good. This makes him very uninteresting. He’s also a carbon copy of every Persian hero to ever grace the silver screen; Disney’sAladdin (1992) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940) come to mind. He’s really not any different at the end of the movie than he is at the beginning. He’s just boring.

Tamina drove me nuts! There’s hardly a single line that she speaks to Dastan that isn’t somehow insulting, demeaning, or challenging of his capabilities or competence. She was bratty, untrusting of anyone, and would stab Dastan in the back at her earliest convenience. Why on earth were they in love by the end of the movie!? I would have tied her to a cactus half way through the movie and left her for dead. The romantic interest between Dastan and Tamina had no basis or logic behind it. The meager romance was included for the sake of having romantic scenes in the movie. Towards the climax of the movie Dastan has Tamina by the arm over a cliff, keeping her from falling to her death. I actually shouted at Dastan to just let go and put her out of his misery. She is pretty, but I’d like to think there should be more requirements to being a princess than just being pretty. Tamina is one of the worst damsels in distresses I’ve ever seen.

The action scenes were rather confusing. A lot of the movie was filmed in front of a green screen. The backgrounds occasionally didn’t match up with the movements of the camera very well, which gave the viewer a vague sense of space. On top of this the camera was often doing close shots of the actors fighting. This gave you a good sense that something was happening, but not a good sense of what was happening. Yes they are fighting, but what is it they are doing and who is winning? I felt like I should be on the edge of my seat, but I wasn’t sure why since I couldn’t tell what was actually going on.

At one point, Dastan is sinking in huge sinkhole of sand. I’m not really sure how he got there and it certainly doesn’t show how he got out. One moment he’s in the sinkhole, the next moment he’s on this cascading waterfall of sand tumbling down towards a cliff. It doesn’t show Dastan falling through the sinkhole and onto the sand-waterfall; it doesn’t show him escaping the sinkhole only to fall again into the sand-waterfall. This is more an issue of bad editing than confusing action scenes.

Not only were the characters uninteresting and shallow, but I wasn’t really sure what they were fighting for. Sure, keep the Dagger of Time away from the evil Uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley), but what happens if he gets it? They could just reset time they way they want it. No one has a risk of dying; they just go back in time a few seconds and prevent the death. They do this several times in the movie. So, if you can just correct anything with the dagger, who cares of Nazim becomes King of the Persian Empire? Who cares if anyone dies? It can just be corrected.

Disney seemed to be trying to make another swashbuckler action movie with Prince of Persia, but the movie just ended up being really underdeveloped and shoddily done. If you look at it in the context of being a very simple fairy tale with some over the top action scenes, it becomes slightly more palatable. The movie is also such light viewing that you could put it on as background noise while cleaning the house, catch glimpses once in a while, and still not miss anything. It’s a pretty clean movie, too. It would be alright for a family movie night with kids, but really there are much better movies you can watch as a family.