rated PG-13

Director Duncan Jones shares more than just a last name with a certain globetrotting adventurer archaeologist. Like the fedora sporting fictional hero, he was born to a father who is respected and accomplished in his field (David Bowie). His formative years were spent traveling the world (living along the way in London, Berlin, Tokyo and New York) and encountering all manner of luminaries and legends (including Jim Henson and Tony Scott), absorbing their passions, listening to their advice and benefiting from the considerable inspirations, and industry connections, they afforded him. 

Having initially shunned his dad’s proclivities for entertaining, Jones studied philosophy in the States, eventually following his own inclinations to film school in London. He cut his teeth, as many directors do, in the world of advertising, landing a few high profile gigs that taught him to navigate all the schedules, expenses and egos of the financiers, producers and artists that it takes to coordinate a successful film project.

His first feature film, 2009’s fiercely independent “Moon” (which he also wrote), proved his knack for bull’s-eye casting, his eye for crisp, streamlined visuals, and his ability to pull together a professional, high quality production on a thumbnail budget. The film also displayed a mature, thoughtful approach to some distinctly science fictional subject matter, deftly grounding some out-of-this-world concepts with a simple, emotional human core. 

It comes as no surprise that Jones was soon in high demand among the few Hollywood players not afraid to embrace the construction of a story that 1) doesn’t have a number after the title; 2) isn’t based on a video game or action figure line; and 3) actually might cause an audience to think. Which brings us to Jones’s sophomore outing, “Source Code.”

Though the film could easily be pitched as a cross between “Groundhog Day” and “Die Hard,” or “Twelve Monkeys” meets “24,” or even “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” with a twist of  “Quantum Leap,” the story, as written by Ben Ripley, neatly transcends all these influences to create a smart, gripping little Twilight Zone that’s all its own. 

Jake Gyllenhaal, apparently working to be forgiven for his preposterous “Prince of Persia” debacle, stars as a soldier who awakens after an Afghanistan firefight to find his consciousness mysteriously implanted into the body of a random civilian on a Chicago commuter train rigged to explode if he can’t find the responsible party in the subsequent eight minutes. Almost like a video game, when he fails (and he fails pretty spectacularly), he’s forced to try a second time. And a third. And a fourth. Each time reawakening to the exact same moment, eight minutes before the catastrophic firebomb tears apart his new body and everyone else on the train, over and over again.

In between trips, he finds himself strapped into what appears to be a dark, malfunctioning space capsule, his only outside connection being a video monitor on which a pair of curt military scientists (Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright) remotely explain his mission in only the most vague of terms. 

Is this some kind of elaborate simulation? Could this really be time travel? Why is he not himself when he’s on the train, but retains all his own memories? Can his actions actually affect the outcome of this dire scenario? Though his handlers cave just long enough to offer a brief explanation, the technical mumbo jumbo they throw at him would make Stephen Hawking’s head spin, and leaves him only that much more bewildered. 

The two mysteries—the one he’s told to solve and the one he’s told to ignore—unfold and dovetail in deliberate and surprising ways. Each time he shifts between the bright communal atmosphere of the doomed commute and the claustrophobic womb-coffin of his capsule, he’s given fresh opportunities to interact with, respectively, the other passengers on the train (all of whom, incidentally, are allowed comfortably complex, lived-in skins) and the lab coats flickering on his screen (who seem legitimately concerned, in their own coldhearted way). 

The dialogue slowly reveals new details to reconcile his divergent situations—details which, as with the best mysteries, often make things even more perplexing. Beyond Jones’s very meticulous attention to tying up all the threads by the end, what raises this narrative above what could otherwise have just devolved into a bunch of balderdash is that, at their center, the most pressing questions asked lie along the lines of “Who am I?” “How did I get here?” and “Do I have any control over myself, when the time I live in, the duration I live, and even the body in which I live are all apparently ascribed by higher powers?” 

You’d be hard pressed to find such Descartian discourse in today’s typical Hollywood pictures, even less so to find a film that strikes such a satisfying balance of suspense, charm, humor and huge explosions. Even with the recent upsurge in Philip K. Dick adaptations, most dilute their investigations of identity, authority and existence into such insubstantial crowd-pleasing drivel that they fail to please any crowd, at all. Not so with “Source Code,” and that’s what makes it truly extraordinary. 

Jones has shown he can work independently, but that’s a wholly different animal than producing a full-blown studio piece, with all the dumb-downing, compromising, and corner-cutting that typically comes with it. It’s a trick that has eluded many of recent memory’s most promising talents (cough, Nimrod Antal, cough). But, with “Source Code,” Jones shows that he can pull it off, and with no small degree of  grace, intelligence and integrity. 

They may be marketing this as just another sci-fi time travel trip, and, to a point, it may be that. On the other hand, it’s also good, solid, responsible storytelling with a heart. That’s bound to befuddle some folks, especially the one’s who come into it thinking “Prince of Persia” was a lot of fun, but so be it. 

With only the two notches on his belt, Jones may not qualify as a hero quite yet, but he’s definitely a champion, and at least until the blockbuster meat-grinder manages to swallow him (fingers crossed that it never does), the man deserves all the fortune and glory he can get.