I was reflecting, leaving the cinema the other day, on the very clear similarity between the film I had just watched, “Source Code” (2011), by Duncan Jones, and “Groundhog Day” (1993), by Harold Ramis. In the latter, Bill Murray’s character, a stroppy and cynical weatherman finds himself “trapped” inside this Groundhog Day, as it is called, by finding himself forced to relive every single moment of it, from morning till night.

In “Source Code”, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, an American helicopter pilot, finds himself on a commuter train, “trapped” inside someone else’s body, during the same 8 minutes before the explosion of a bomb that will kill him and everyone else in the train. And then he lives these minutes again, and again, because, it turns out, he is on a mission.