Source Code, for which a new trailer and a short clip have arrived online this week, might just be the most eagerly awaited science fiction-orientated movie of 2011.
First up, it's got Duncan Jones on board as director, the British film-maker who brought us the dizzyingly claustrophobic Moon in 2009. Then there's the sumptuous cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright, all of whom are quite capable of headlining a film in their own right (Wright gets mainly supporting roles these days, but check him out in Julian Schnabel's underrated Jean Michelle Basquiat biopic, Basquiat).
Finally, there's the preposterously outrageous high-concept premise, which sees Gyllenhaal transported via technology into a train passenger's body for the last eight minutes of his host's life, just as a bomb is about to go off and blow everyone on board to kingdom come.
Christopher Nolan's Oscar-nominated Inception rather broke the rules last year by allocating a good hour of the film to an explanation of its own imaginative basis, and while I'm not sure Jones will follow suit, there are parallels between the two film-makers. In many ways, Moon resembles Nolan's Memento, with its tight, linear narrative and general sense of disorientation. Might Source Code be the point where Jones makes the step up to more commercial fare while retaining his reputation as an intelligent film-maker, just as Nolan has done?
It's quite possible. And yet there is something a little generic about the promos for the film we've seen so far. They remind me of Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth, with its focus on an under-pressure central figure operating under the guidance of others. Colin Farrell, who starred in that passably decent thriller, is due to appear in a forthcoming remake of Total Recall, and there's also something about Source Code which recalls the frantic camp of Paul Verhoeven's 1990 sci-fi romp.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, based very loosely on the Philip K Dick novella We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, relied on audiences buying the idea that, one day, we'll be able to purchase exciting "experiences" of our choosing. Not an obscene leap of faith, perhaps, but Source Code wants us to accept that the technology will eventually exist not only to transport our minds into other people's bodies, but also to travel through time.
But of course, only for eight minutes.
It all smacks of a MacGuffin designed to create a thrilling "race against time", as opposed to anything based on real science, and gives the movie a slightly throwaway vibe, more reminiscent of a Tony Scott film than one of brother Ridley's darkly atmospheric late 70s, early 80s sci-fi outings. I'm not suggesting this matters one jot, or even that it's remotely surprising. If Jones's film is well-realised, its rather "boys own" comic book-esque premise needn't be an issue. But it's worth pointing out Source Code looks like its going to be ploughing a very different furrow to Moon's minimalistic, paranoiac aesthetic – even if the trailers have been edited to present a more mainstream movie than the one which will eventually find its way into cinemas.
Like many who admired Jones' earlier movie, I'm very much hoping that the film-maker follows the Nolan road to success rather than swallowing the studio dollar and travelling along the path of ever-diminishing returns, that passage to film-making ignominy followed in recent years by the likes of Richard Kelly and M Night Shyamalan. Both these directors hit the ground running with well-received debuts before pratfalling into increasingly banal material as their careers evolved. Jones, who will be working from somebody else's screenplay on Source Code, is surely too good a film-maker to allow that to happen to him, wouldn't you agree?
