Sunshine

July 20th, 2007 by James Cook | Source:

Directed by: Danny Boyle
Written by: Alex Garland
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Hiroyuki Sanada, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, Mark Strong

Score: 9/10

I’m a sucker for disaster movies. I’m even more of a fan of the disaster movie where the whole planet is the primary target, and hoping a select group of people can save us all. Movies like Armageddon and Independence Day are personal favorites, and while I can whole heartily understand why the majority of moviegoers hate them, I just can’t get enough. Needless to say I was anxiously awaiting Sunshine and seeing Danny Boyle’s take on the genre.

Its fifty years in the future and the sun is dying. It’s up to a select group of scientists to travel out to the dying star and re-ignite it with a huge ass bomb. Bombs are always the answer to any disaster right? This crew is really earths last chance at survival; seven years ago Earth had its first chance at re-igniting the sun with the appropriately titled Icarus crew that unfortunately failed. It’s now up to Icarus-II.

I absolutely loved how this movie began. A simple narration by Capa (Cillian Murphy) the ships physicist over the beautiful visual of the dying sun, describing what the problem is and how they plan on fixing it. It doesn’t open on Earth having to introduce all the characters and waiting for them to discover the problem. We’re into it right from the start and it works brilliantly.

The cast of characters is what makes Sunshine a really great movie. You don’t have the over the top clichéd moments that you might come to expect from this type of movie. In many disaster movies and science fiction movies for that matter the story is usually driven by the visuals. Sunshine is driven by the characters and it’s a really refreshing take on the genre. It’s with this approach that you can see that 2001 was a big inspiration for it - moments when a crew member is interacting with the ships artificial intelligence or simply a shot of the ship itself floating in space.

It’s not to say that there aren’t any great visuals in Sunshine, because there are plenty. There’s just more of a balance to them. One scene in particular where Capa and the ships captain are investigating some damage and get caught up directly in the sun’s path was very impressive and entertaining.

The one problem I had with the movie that I’m sure many people had was the direction the story takes in the final act. It goes from being a really exciting and intense sci-fi/ disaster movie into a weird outer-space slasher flick. It doesn’t tank the movie, and make you boo at the end, it’s just very unexpected. But then again there was a lot about Sunshine that I found unexpected and most of it worked very well.

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are a great team, and what they did with the zombie genre with 28 Days Later… they’ve done with Sunshine. They’ve taken a genre where the audience expects to see certain things. It’s with these expectations that the two are able to catch you off guard and blow you away with the way they choose to tell the story.

Overall, Sunshine is a great movie that deserves a lot more attention than its getting. It’s been lost in the summer shuffle of big blockbusters and that’s a shame. Try to seek this one out and definitely look for it on DVD.