Sunshine

Year: 2007
Running time: 107 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Alex Garland
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Troy Garity, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Mark Strong

Face to face with the giver of life.

Sunshine is a great idea for a film. Set in the future (although only 2057, which has the effect of making it recognisably still our world (so to speak) but so inconceivable as to be impossible to completely suspend disbelief), it centres around a mission to save our dying sun. Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy) is plagued by disturbing and disjointed visions, so it's no stretch to guess that it soon turns into a Shining / Alien / Event Horizon cross-over, as our intrepid crew face starvation, sabotage and a growing insanity as they glide ever closer to our star. Things get worse when they come into contact with the ship from the previous failed attempt and meet crazy ex-captain Pinbacker (Mark Strong) who has made the same mistake the ancient Inca civilisation did and turned the sun into a god and is now intent on killing everyone. Unfortunately, it’s neither as good as its central idea nor any of the films it is influenced by, which is a shame, as Danny Boyle is certainly a director that is usually reliable and should be able to pull it off. Like Kubrick, he seems to be on a mission to make a classic film in every genre. Unfortunately, he'll have to take another stab at sci-fi some other time.

Clearly no idea what's going on either.

One of the reasons it falls short may be budgetary, as although most of the effects are very impressive, particularly for a measly $40 million, there are some moments where it just looks and feels a bit, for want of a better word, cheap. As the story comes to its climax, it becomes increasingly hard to follow what’s going on. I’m not one that usually has to have it spelled out for me, but the last 15 minutes are just a collection of images that are incoherent. Maybe the idea is that your own mind is supposed to be flying apart, like the characters', but I just lost interest.

Nowhere near as good as it could, or should have been.

Score: 5/10

Roger Ebert rather liked it, but Bill had similar problems to me.