Source Code (2011)

I really thought I would like this movie.  It got good reviews from what I remember.  I was trying not to get burned out by reading a lot about it, to save some enthusiasm for actually seeing it.

If I had known it was just going to be Quantum Leap meets Groundhog Day I wouldn't have bothered.

CPT Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a train and finds himself talking to a woman he's never met but who apparently knows him, except she keeps calling him Sean.  Then their train blows up.

CPT Colter Stevens wakes up in a capsule and finds himself talking to a woman he's never met but who apparently knows him.  This time, it's an Air Force Captain (Vera Farmiga) who tells him that the train isn't real, it's a program called Source Code and they have sent his consciousness into a loop where he occupies the final 8 minutes of Sean Fentress' life aboard this doomed train.  They need him to go through these eight minutes again and again until he figures out who set the bomb before they can destroy downtown Chicago.  How is this possible?  Why only eight minutes?  Why that one particular guy?

QUANTUM!!!

So, Colter/Sean goes back again and again, trying to alter events in this closed timeloop so he can save the woman across from him (Michelle Monaghan) from a fiery death.  He is also trying to find a way to call his dad and figure out what exactly happened to him that caused him to end up in a capsule instead of flying a helicopter in Afghanistan, which is the last thing he actually remembers.

The mystery of the mad bomber is actually ridiculously easy to solve.  Rob (that's New Boyfriend for the record) and I got it on our first pass.  There are a couple of decent red herrings but ignore them and go with your first instinct. 

I thought the love story was ridiculously contrived and that Colter Stevens was actually kind of a dick.  The guy he's Scott-Bakula-ing, Fentress, had laid down a ton of groundwork with the chick, Christine, but was apparently too shy to seal the deal.  Then he dies in a horrible explosion, filled with regrets for the missed opportunity, while a doppleganger swoops in on this loop of the last eight minutes of his life and macks on his woman.  There's some identity theft on an epic scale.

And in case you think I'm being hyperbolic with the whole Quantum Leap comparison, check the credits for a cameo voice.