Source Code (2011)

This is Groundhog Day meets Back to the Future. And the soldier being sent into a domestic (terrorist) battlefield is being kept alive after losing most of his body in war.

It is also a metaphor for a returning soul working through his karma by reincarnating.

Storyline (from IMDb)

Army Captain Colter Stevens finds himself working on a special program where his consciousness can be inserted into another human being. The only catch is [he] can only be there for 8 minutes at any given time. That morning, a bomb exploded on a commuter train just outside Chicago. He occupies the body of teacher going to work on that train and is confused as to what he is doing or why he is there as his last memory is of flying his helicopter on a combat mission in Afghanistan. Those in charge of the program explain to him that there is a bomb on the train, and that he must locate it. More importantly, he must identify the bomber as another bombing is expected later that day. He is also told however that he cannot change the past and can only gather information. As he develops a liking for his traveling companion Christina, he sets out to test that theory.

Now that’s a storyline!

The Train Ride

The eight minute train journey gives the movie its built-in tension. Stevens works through the bombing scenario repeatedly, gaining more and more information, until he confronts the terrorist directly. And then he proves to himself that he can actually change the past, but it turns out that when he does, it is in an alternative version.

So what’s a fellow to do?

But Is This Living?

Since the program is using his neural pathways to make him think he’s jumping into the teacher’s body, he experiences everything directly, as if it were happening to him personally. But something of his ‘reality’ keeps sneaking into his consciousness, and he begins to suspect that something is not as it seems.

Finally he persuades one of the program assistants to shut his life support machine off. He may have twigged on to the fact that his soul was actually doing the experiencing, and not just his mental pathways. And he thinks(!) that the end of the journey (when the machine stops) will just freeze the image forever in his mind.

[Look away now if you don’t want to see what happens…]

So, even though the body dies, the adventure continues.

End of lesson.