Source Code: Resourceful Stupidity

The premise is acceptable sci-fi: terminal soldier Gyllenhaal is sent on one last (short: 8 min) mission: re-live the final minutes of the life of a victim of a railroad terrorist attack. What makes this a feature film and not a short film is that he can re-live those eight minutes an apparently unlimited number of times, kind of like a tragic Groundhog Day, with the protagonist progressively uncovering more and more information about the attack and finally sussing out who the terrorist is and stopping him.

So far so good, but it wasn't fun because Hollywood is apparently incapable anymore of giving us a realistic (that means fact-based, folks) terror scenario. Of course, I knew the minute Gyllenhaal started ogling the Arab businessman that he was a red-herring. And of course, I knew the second he zeroed in on the doughy-faced white kid with the kitchy "Illinois"-embroidered wallet that that guy was a crazy, right-wing reactionary Timothy McVeigh and we had our man.

Now think about this: it takes hundreds of people to make a film and nobody in that crowd pulled the screenwriter or director aside and said, "You're trying to make a thriller here, right? Why don't you throw in a twist or two, so it's not so predictable?" No one? I mean, politics aside, it would just be good storytelling to have the terrorist actually be the Arab guy because we're all programmed to be so politically correct now. The Arab could be found, initially, to seem innocent, but the hero eventually discovers his perfidy and stops him. But no. The cracker has a van (of course it's white) filled with high explosive and a dirty bomb in a shipping cube covered with, what else, the stars and stripes. Could there be a more cliched antagonist? Methinks not.

So, what might have been a fairly interesting exploration about "walking a mile in someone else's shoes" or a chance for rebirth resolves itself into a politically-correct melange of outright stupidity and cowardice. Hollywood is one day going to run out of Nazis, Neo-Nazis, and American Nazis and have to use actual real-world terrorists, of which there are apparently thousands: Fundamentalist Islamic Fascists (I've already copyrighted the acronym: FIF.)

Some day. Probably not in my lifetime.