Sunshine

Title: Sunshine
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans
Director: Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later)

“At the end of time, a moment will come when just one man remains. Then the moment will pass. Man will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here... but stardust.”

Hardly low budget, but still a tenth of the cost of the large Hollywood budgets, and stretching out of his normal style of film, into more heavily sci-fi territory, this is a film that – whilst not his best work – shows the breadth of capability Danny Boyle has to offer. With a large cast of not the best known actors, he succeeds in creating a film that tries to do it all. With an adventure story at its core, he is not one to shy away from scenes of intense dramatic tension and even horror, much of which is constantly built up to the films climactic conclusion with a great deal of success. With a somewhat unusual story, its nothing if not an original and adventurous endeavour, wrought with difficulties (and I’m not referring to the plot here), which results in a film that quite simply doesn’t always work.

Set in the year 2057, the sun is dying. The Icarus II, with its crew of eight, is sent on a mission to travel to the sun and deliver a powerful bomb capable of re-igniting the sun, a mission which the Icarus I failed before it. The majority of the film revolves around the character of ‘Capa,’ the physicist responsible for the design of the bomb, what follows is essentially a disaster film. Everything that could possibly go wrong finds a way to occur, including a number of elements you could never have predicted. Each scene, regardless of how irrelevant it seems at the time finds a purpose later on, explaining it early on so as to not need to pause for explanation later, and it is through this that he maintains a steadily increasing pace as the story proceeds, a fact that is clearly evident when considering the script.

Why Cillian Murphy (Capa) was chosen for this role is beyond me, not performing badly, but even in scenes of intense frustration, anger or despair he performs in the same, unconvincing deadpan manner that left a lot to be desired. Fully expecting an equally mediocre performance from Rose Byrne (Cassie), the apparent ‘eye-candy’ for the film she at no point feels relegated to that status, providing a constant tone of disquieted distress, which whilst could have easily become monotonous was pulled off fairly successfully. Despite this it was Chris Evans (Mace) who really stole the show, providing a tension and sense of drama beyond what the others seemed capable of, all too often the scenes felt as though he was the driving force, trying to provoke the others into improving their own performance to match his. The rest of the support cast performed adequately, with special commendations to Benedict Wong (Trey) and Michelle Yeoh (Corazan) who, despite comparatively minor roles, succeeded in portraying their characters in a believable manner, excellently conveying their emotions through their physicality beyond the dialogue.

Death is a frequent occurrence in this film and whilst the director (from the commentary) stated he didn’t want to reminisce about those lost in order to maintain forward momentum, he did something many directors fail to do; he did justice to those that had died. It was not a simple statement, a callous point of fact that a particular character had ceased to be, each one was given a short and visually striking scene, as if to utter a final goodbye to the character in question which made their death carry that much more weight, a technique that perhaps more people should utilise. Unfortunately, this doesn’t compensate for the manner in which this ‘forward momentum’ was performed. Starting slow, the entire film presents a gradual build-up of tension, each new turn of events more drastic and problematic than the one preceding it; this would perhaps not be a problem in itself if it didn’t initially set the bar so high. What results by the end of the film is a ludicrous situation presenting itself. Re-igniting a sun with a bomb is hard enough pill to swallow in itself, but (without going into detail) the film transforms from a tense adventure film to a badly thought out slasher.

This was unquestionably an ambitious project with many good features; a solid plot with fleshed out characters (for the most part) as well as some excellent CGI work, and tastefully shot death scenes. It only fell flat in trying to do too much and outperform the scenes before it. An interesting ride, but Boyle can do better.