Hello and welcome to the Slate Spoiler Special podcast for Source Code, the new science fiction thriller from director Duncan Jones.

I'm John Swansberg, Slate's culture editor.

I'm sitting in today for Slate's film critic Dana Stevens, who's the usual host of Spoiler Special.

Dana is on vacation this week, The Lucky Duck.

Joining me today is Slate's senior editor, Josh Levine.

Josh, hello.

Hey, John, and this movie is just so important that we couldn't wait for Dana to get back from vacation.

That's exactly right.

Source code must be discussed.

It must be hashed out.

So let's get right to it.

There's a lot to talk about.

So I wanted to start by asking you,

do you understand the basic premise of this film? And if so, can you explain it to me?

That's an intense question. So my understanding of the basic premise of the movie is based on the

Wikipedia summary that I copied and pasted onto this piece of paper that I'm looking at.

What did the wisdom of the crowd tell you?

There's a decorated airman involved.

So Jake Gyllenhaal plays Captain Coulter Stevens.

As you see in the beginning of the movie, he wakes up and he's assuming this other guy's identity. You gradually

figure out that he has been placed on this train in the last eight minutes before it explodes.

And he has an assignment from some sort of shadowy military organization

...