Sunshine

In a film titled remarkably similarly to "Stardust", "Sunshine" has a very different kind of mood and asthetic.

This new film from Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting", "28 Days Later") posits that the sun is dying, shedding less and less light on Earth, dipping the planet into a deadly winter. The Icarus II is a space vessel, sent as a last ditch effort to reignite the portion of the sun which is at sub-par radiance. The cast is a potpourri of Asians and Europeans, each carrying on his or her grim visage the terrifying pain of trying to save all of humanity.

Amusingly -- to me, anyway -- several of these actors are appearing in lead or supporting roles in other films from this summer. Chris Evans was The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four sequel. Cliff Curtis had a small role in "Live Free or Die Hard". Rose Byrne was in "28 Weeks Later", ironically the sequel to another Boyle film. Even the unreconizable Mark Strong was in "Stardust".

But enough about casting. How's the movie? On a science fiction level, it's phenomenal. It's really 2001 quality stuff. The visuals are fantastic. On a story level, I love the fact that everything flows from a singular moment in the story. There aren't fifteen different things that go wrong (ala "Armageddon"). There's one thing that goes wrong, and everything else comes from that.

True enough, there's a third act complication that feels a little forced, involving an intruder on the ship. It all ties together logically, but it's less interesting than the hard sci-fi stuff that starts the film off.

Still and all, thumbs up.

Comments

[David Gaw]

As far as I'm concerned, any astronaut dumb enough to climb into a ship bound for the Sun named Icarus deserves whatever merry hell gets thrown at them.