Duncan Jones



7.0 Moon
6.0 Source Code
6.5 Warcraft
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Duncan Jones (Britain, 1971), David Bowie's son, debuted with the short Whistle (2002), followed several years later by Moon (2009), his first and best sci-fi film.

Source Code (2011) is another sci-fi film which is also a political thriller of sorts. The plot is wildly implausible.

A young man wakes up on a train while a woman is talking to him. The woman calls him Sean but he doesn't know whom she is and he knows he's not Sean. He only remembers that he is an air force captain and he was on a war mission before waking up on that train. Before he can make sense of what is going on the train explodes killing a lot of people, including the woman, Christina. Sean wakes up inside a small cockpit. A female officer, Colleen, is talking to him via videoconference, trying to find out what happened on the train. She is speaking like she's in a rush. Before he can fully understand what she wants from him, he finds himself again asleep on that train. Christina again wakes him up. The sequence of events resumes exactly like the first time and again the train explodes. The difference is that this time he paid attention to every person on the train and found the bomb. He wakes up again in the cockpit. Colleen is disappointed that he failed to figure out who is the bomber and sends him back to what he believes is a simulation but warning him that it is not just a simulation: someone did blow up the train and is plotting to carry out more attacks. He always wakes up on the train eight minutes before the explosion and each time everybody does the same things. This time he sees someone who looks suspicious and follows him when he gets off the train, and he takes Christina with him. The train still explodes, Sean is killed by another train when he falls on the rails, and wakes up again in the cockpit. He tells Colleen that he saved Christina, but Colleen informs him that Christina is dead, like everybody else. Colleen's supervisor explains to him that he is pioneering a new device called "Source Code" that can reconstruct what happened by using the last eight minutes of memory in the brain of one of the people who died: the captain was mortally wounded in the war mission and is now being used to find the bomber of that train. They try to convince the captain that it is heroic of him to use his last few seconds of life to find the bomber and prevent more deaths. The captain is offended that he is being used for this experiment but the supervisor promises to let him die after this final mission. They send him back to the train and again he fails: the train explodes and he can't figure out who the bomber is. Finally, he succeeds and figures out who the terrorist is. He finds another bomb in his van. He is killed by the terrorist but he passes the vital information to Colleen and her supervisor, and the terrorist is stopped. The supervisor is ecstatic that his invention worked. He tells Colleen that he has no intention of letting the captain die: he can be useful for many more missions of the same kind. The captain begs Colleen to send him back to the train one more time, and then to terminate him after the eight seconds. Colleen accepts, disobeying her boss. The captain now has all the information to prevent the train explosion, to arrest the terrorist and to save Christina (with whom he seems suddenly in love). The captain then sends a message to Colleen which in theory can't arrive because it all happens only in his mind. After eight seconds Colleen unplugs his body from the devices that keep him alive, and the captain dies. However, Source Code has created an alternative timeline in which the captain and Christina are alive because the train has not exploded. Colleen receives the message that the captain sent her.

Warcraft (2016)

Mute (2018)

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