Digital Divide: August 2011

Deja Vu All Over Again

D’ja ever find yourself watching the Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day and think, “This is cute and all, but I wonder what the military applications of living the same day over and over again would be”?

Or perhaps the violence level in all of those “Quantum Leap” episodes wasn’t as high as you would have liked.

Well, take heart, campers. Source Code Summit Entertainment) addresses all of the above concerns.

Air Force helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on the Metra train bound for Chicago, and from the get-go, he realizes things aren’t quite right. For one thing, he has no idea how he got there, and the gorgeous girl sitting across from him (Michelle Monaghan) keeps calling him “Sean.” Then there’s the strange circumstance of looking in the mirror to find the reflection to be that of a high school teacher named Sean Fentress, at least that’s who the ID in his wallet says he is. Then the train blows up. Disorienting, to say the least.

Immediately after the explosion, Stevens wakes up in some sort of cryogenic chamber, where a woman in uniform on a video screen (Vera Farmiga) talks him through the process of re-orientation.

Turns out Stevens is part of a government project that has figured a way for a person to inhabit the last eight minutes of the “source code,” or the lingering effects of a dying person’s being. He’s sent to occupy Fentress’ place on the exploding train in order to stop an even larger attack – a dirty bomb set to turn Chicago into nothing more than a pleasant memory.

Source Code could have easily been nothing more than a by-the-numbers techno thriller, and it does seem to revel in its “Quantum Leap” resemblance, so much so that “Leap” star Scott Bakula appears in a voice cameo as Stevens’ father. But director Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s kid), and writer Ben Ripley craft an intricate and rich storyline that takes the technical aspects and injects them with a wonderful human element that downplays some of the film’s more illogical shortcomings.

The Blu-ray special features aren’t really that special, as it only includes some cast interviews, commentary by Gyllenhaal, Jones, and Ripley, and an interactive menu called “Access: Source Code.”

Still, it’s well worth a look, if only for the fact that intelligent sci-fi is getting harder and harder to come by these days.

Limitless
20th Century Fox

While we’re in the mood for some head games and mind expansion, there’s Limitless.

Scientists say we only use 20 percent of our brains. Personally, I know a metric ton of people who use a lot less – yours truly included – but for the sake of argument we’ll go with what they say. Imagine there was a pill that unlocked the remaining 80 percent.

That’s Limitless.

Would you use your newfound Mensa status to cure disease, end global strife, try to explain the appeal of Dane Cook? Or would you just be a money-grubbing dick? For all the enticing possibilities, Limitless goes for the latter.

We find Bradley Cooper as Eddie, a hopelessly blocked writer and general burnout until his former brother-in-law hooks him up with the latest designer drug, known as NZT. Within weeks, Eddie is speaking any language he hears, finishes his book in days, and devises fool-proof ways of picking winners in the stock market.

The only drawback of NZT is that people have a tendency to die once they stop taking it.

On the surface, Limitless is a fairly standard action thriller, with elements we’ve seen in dozens of films before. Not far below the surface however, is an unmistakable parable about the dangers of meth. That’s the impression I got, at least, although I gotta say I hope I’m wrong, based on the film’s ending. If they really were going for the anti-drug sermon, the resolution betrays the message.

The Limitless Blu-ray features an extended version with an alternate ending, along with a “making of” segment.

— Timothy Hiatt

Category: Columns, Digital Divide, Monthly