We first find Stevens when he wakes up on a train across from Christina (Michelle Monaghan) whom he doesn't know. Not only that, but he doesn't know how he got there and Christina recognizes him as someone completely different; a man named Sean Fentress. When Stevens looks in the mirror he even sees Fentress' reflection. If everything wasn't confusing enough eight minutes after Stevens wakes up a bomb goes off and blows up the entire train.
Stevens is brought back to "reality" where he is in some sort of capsule and being spoken to by Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), some sort of military personnel. We learn that Stevens is there to use the technology source code, created by Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), to revisit the last eight minutes of Sean Fentress' life and find out who bombed the train. By finding the bomber of the train they can hopefully prevent a future attack that is supposed to happen later that same day. The trick of course is that each time Stevens goes into the source code he only has eight minutes to discover who the bomber is because at the end of the eight minutes the train blows up again.
Getting Stevens to do all this isn't so easy though as he is still not exactly sure where he is and how he got to be a part of this program. The last memory he has he was with his unit in Iraq. So there's multiple conflicts going on as Stevens must discover who bombed the train, but also use his time in the source code to figure out what has happened to him.
I liked this movie because I thought it's plot was smart and original, even though it used a cliched conflict as its starting point. That of course being the bomb on a train and having to discover who did it. But once the movie dives into its real conflicts and story lines it gets much deeper and has twists and turns that were not expected.
I thought everyone did a good job acting wise. Monaghan does a good job of having to constantly repeat the same performance with slight changes. As with Gyllenhaal and his character, he does well as his character is all over the place and constantly on edge.
I give this movie a thumbs up and three out of four stars. It's definitely more entertaining and has more depth than its trailers lead on to. I will say it's fun to see in theaters, but it's not necessary too. So, if you feel like waiting until it's out on Netflix or Redbox then go for it, because you won't be losing anything from the movie without the theater experience. Enjoy!
Once again I don't have anything lined up for my next review so feel free to comment with suggestions.
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