Source Code

Ben Ripley sold this as a spec in 2007 and it landed on that year’s list of best unproduced screenplays; Jake Gyllenhaal, fresh from Moon, pushed for Duncan Jones to direct. The story was originally set in New York, with the train vanishing into a tunnel to close each loop. Jones relocated it to Chicago so he could use the mirrored Anish Kapoor sculpture as both a landmark and a surface for close ups. That move explains the argument about the ending. Ripley’s draft stopped shortly after the kiss: mission accomplished, girl beside him, out. Jones judged that too many questions were left hanging and added the message to Goodwin plus the scene at the sculpture. Anyone who finds the epilogue too sweet is objecting to a director, not a studio note, and the freeze frame is a clean place to stop for the harder version. The eight minute limit forces the screenplay to show the same carriage repeatedly, and the film turns that into instruction: by the fourth run you stop following Colter and start scanning the frame for the bomber yourself. The physics are waved away by one character in one scene, while the real subject, a soldier’s right to be allowed to die, arrives late and bluntly. Montreal doubles for Chicago throughout.