Sunshine

John Chard

Are you an angel? Has the time come? I've been waiting so long. We are in the not too distant future and the Sun is fading out. After a first mission to reignite it with a nuclear bomb fails, with the ship apparently lost in space, a new team are sent to try again. But it really isn't as simple as that... Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland team up once again for this sci-fi adventure thriller. For as long as I can personally remember, outer space and the planets that dwell within it, have always served us well for cinematic treats. Fears of the unknown and worries over the destruction of Earth, by and large make for great premise's. Not all films realise this potential of course, but it always makes for a great starting point. For his first venture into this realm, Boyle has gone for the Sun as his point of reference, and it makes for a marvellously claustrophobic picture that poses as many questions as it does answers. And even tho ultimately the science fiction aspects of it do not naturally add up, it's dazzling in its visuals and thought provoking into the bargain. Boyle has never hid his influences and favourites from the public, and here he homages everything from Alien to Event Horizon, stopping for tea and crumpets at 2001s house along the way. But that is no bad thing, molding elements from great sci-fi past with his own intriguing story has given Sunshine a tremendous heart, to which Boyle then manages to cloak it with high quality drama. The crew are up there and we know that this is a genre piece and things invariably go wrong, this gives the discerning viewer an eager anticipation, a sense that one shouldn't go to the toilet for something will be missed. And Boyle lives up to the promise showed, such a pity then, that Boyle didn't let us get better acquainted with his characters at the start. Because then the impact would surely have doubled as each perilous and wrought scenario unfolded. Having racked up the tension and intrigued us with the premise, expertly fusing CGI with his own craft work along the way, Boyle's Sunshine lives or dies by it's last quarter; depending on your proclivity of course. It has proved to be a most divisive point with critics and fans alike. To say it's a genre shift accompanied with implausibility is being a touch unkind I feel, this is after all a sci-fi picture about a ship going to reignite the Sun! Never the less it doesn't quite close the film triumphantly after the twists that preceded it, turns and explosions have lulled the viewers in, but personally it satisfies this entertained observer. Not in a big bang dynamic way, but in the way that asks me for a further thought process, and that may just be what Boyle and Garland envisaged when they sat down to make the film? Again, depending on your proclivity of course! 8.5/10

CinemaSerf

Danny Boyle has assembled a stellar (had to be said) cast for this rather far-fetched story. The crew of the "Icarus II" are charged with dragging a massive nuclear bomb towards the sun with a view to giving it a bit of a pick-me-up. It's dying, you see. Needless to say their journey is fraught with danger, made worse when they discover the wreckage of a previous ship sent on a similar mission many years earlier. When they board it, though, all is not as it seems and danger lurks! Alex Garland knows how to write a good story and Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne and Chris Evans work quite well together as the extra-terrestrial adventure gathers pace. The dialogue is not the best and the score overwhelms at times, but Boyle still manages to create quite a decent degree of peril mixing well the high quality special effects, a bit of sabotage, sexual tension and a good old-fashioned baddie.

This sci-fi thriller started so strong. It began as a hard science fiction film with a spaceship basically pushing a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan towards the Sun. The ship and crew's task is to reignite the dying Sun. The look and feel of the first half of the movie are wonderful. One of the best parts occurs early as the crew gets to witness the tiny planet Mercury passing between them and the Sun. The science of the movie; the 2001-"feel" of it, the repair of the ship and the golden space suits are really excellent. Unfortunately, in its last 30 minutes, **Sunshine** confuses, becoming more like _Event Horizon_. It also becomes quite confusing as Capa (Cillian Murphy) struggles or hallucinates, I'm not sure which, to complete the mission. It's difficult not to like **Sunshine** for its Sci-Fi wonders, but it falls off sharply in its final half.

In this movie, madness jeopardizes a mission essential to humanity's survival. It shows how faulty logic hardwired into our brains can make our lives less effective and meaningful. The movie gets a bit messy at the end and does a bit of cinematic mysticism which does not fit together with the rational message of the movie. Overall, this is one of my favorite movies because not a lot of movies try to send this particular message.

Dr Nostromo

67/100 The sun is dying and the Icarus II is sent with a massive bomb to kick it back on 7 years after an apparent failure of Icarus I to do the same. This sounds like one of those totally implausible scenarios used to create a spec fx heavy adventure without any real science to back it up. But this film took great care to make it scientifically plausible and the human drama was as fantastic as the story. This is really good, hardcore sci fi and my only gripe is much of the action was blurry and shaky and was making me nauseous. -- DrNostromo.com