In this drama thriller with a sci-fi twist, we are thrown directly into the action, and confusion, for main character Cpt.Colter Stevens(Jake Gylenhaal) as he wakes up on a train he has never been on in a body that is not his and in a conversaton with a woman he has never met. Within the first five minutes, the train explodes and Colter wakes up strapped into a chair in some sort of capsule with only the image of a woman named Goodwin(Vera Formiga) as his direction through confusion and disorientation. As the secrets are revealed one at a time, Colter returns to the train again and again to relive the last eight minutes of another man's life in order to discover the bomber's identity and prevent the next attack. In the process he predictably falls in love with the woman in the next seat(Michelle Monaghan) and she soon becomes his motivation for trying to save everyone. Will Colter acomplish his task and save the girl too?
I was pleasantly suprised by this movie. Time travel and quantum physics can be a minefield for filmmakers to try to mauever. Although never truely without loopholes, the tighter the logic, the better the film will be. This one lacks any major loopholes to distract the viewer and the ones that are there are minor and appear later in the film once you are already invested. The exposition is complicated and a little redundant as the same things are re-explained several times. As a result, I found the begining of the film to drag in an annoying way, and it wasn't until about a half hour into film that I felt like it really got going.
A lot of that drag was due to the character of Colter himself. I found myself getting very irritated with his slowness to catch on to the situatin. He is supposed to be a seasoned and decorated soldier but in the begining of the film we see him blatantly question authority in the middle of a mission and is reluctant to perform even after key elements are explained. I found myself mentally screaming "Just get it done and ask questions later!" I also thought a lot of his initial decisions on the thrain were made in haste and panic without being thought through. Later in the film when he started to get the hang of it, that is when I really started to get into the movie. I was, however, a little annoyed at how quickly he fell for Christina, the girl in the next seat. It has become so expected that it will happen, that they don't even give good reasons why anymore. Forming an attatchment to her makes sense, she's nice enough, but to risk everything just for her when you have only spent the same eight minutes with her maybe a dozen times, doesn't really satisfy me. But, whatever! It is what it is.
Jake Gylenhaal does a fine job playing the protagoist here and Vera Formiga also presents a compelling character, but aside from that, all the other characters come across quite flat. This is definately a story-driven film. Although the ending was easily predictable, how he gets to it is interesting enough. I laughed, I cringed in suspense and said "Ah-ha" at the little plot twists. I was definately along for the ride on this one. You would think that a film consisting of eight minutes on a train and a man locked in a capsule, that the film would feel cramped, but the way Colter moves around the train and sometimes gets off at the stop really gives a sense of space to this film that I think could have been easily lost.
My opinion in a nutshell:
Entertainment: 6- The entertainment value is definatelythere, but I found some of the charaters too obvious, and I found the ending, including the villain, quite anticlimactic but the story is compelling and the directing is very good. A fun way to spend a couple hours.
Award-Worthy: 4- Unlikely, but have fun anyway!
No comments:
Post a Comment