SUNSHINE is one of those films that had me hooked for most of its length, but then during the last act almost completely lost me; although not entirely in this case, thankfully. I was slightly disappointed that Danny Boyle, the director the film (also TRAINSPOTTING and 28 DAYS LATER), went for the conventional mainstream plot devices that he threw into the last act of film. I won’t say what they were… you’ll just have to see the film, and we can talk about it afterwards if anyone wants to… but anyway… I really liked the film overall – it’s one of those apocalyptic, end of the world scenarios that we’re presented with: in a nutshell, the sun is dying, and world governments assemble a team of scientists and astronauts to go on what is essentially on a suicide mission, into space, in a ship armed with a nuclear weapon meant to be launched into the sun’s core, where it will explode and reignite the sun… a scenario which we might actually find ourselves in some time in the our future, whenever that might be. The fact that this film was made on a $30 million budget shocked me… not that $30 million isn’t a lot of money for a feature, but compared to other comparable sci-fi movies that cost 3, 4, 5 times that number, it looks damn good! Danny Boyle spent the $30 million wisely, making it look like it’s a film that cost significantly more than what it actually did cost. It’s a good looking film… there are some scenes in which I remember feeling like I could just mute the audio all together, and put on Beethoven’s moonlight sonata and immerse myself in the moment… reminiscent of films like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and SOLARIS. In 2001, there are lots of zero-gravity, ethereal scenes in which the only thing Kubrick wants us to hear is Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube… really sort of eerie, but to wonderful effect. SUNSHINE is more 2001 and SOLARIS than say, ARMAGEDDON (the Bruce Willis/Ben Afleck/Michael Bay flick), or other more action-driven fanfare… essentially all of Michael Bay’s films :o). It’s a character driven sci-fi film, with splashes of both visual and audio blasts every now and then, but more time is spent on the characters, their motivations, and their decisions... sometimes very difficult, life-altering decisions they have to make in other to evolve as the film progresses… often life/death decisions… that sort of Armed Forces nationalistic notion of putting the fate of your country, or in this case, your world, before yours, even if it means giving your life. And throughout the film, I think almost every character is faced with that decision – some answer it willingly, and others have to be forced to answer it, or the decision is made for them. For the first 80 minutes I was mostly riveted with what I saw, heard, thought and felt, but something happens in the last 20 minutes that, as I said earlier, relied on typical Hollywood dramatics – essentially introducing a character, or more like a thing, meant to sort of “spice things up,” which leads to inevitable chases through dark walkways, and subsequent screams that all just sort of annoyed me, because it all seemed so unnecessary. It takes on a different tone altogether. If that character/thing wasn’t introduced, the rest of the film would have been great just as it was, because, again, it added nothing to the film, and instead took me out of it temporarily. But I won’t let that singular misstep take away the fun I had watching the film up until that moment… because the good far outweighed the bad, and when Sunshine is released on DVD in a couple of months, I’ll be shelling out my $20, or whatever it is, to buy it. The performances are strong – Cillian Murphy and Michelle Yeoh especially – I’ve already talked about the visuals, and it moves along quite briskly at 107 minutes. And I would recommend it… again, if you liked Sci-Fi films like 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, and SOLARIS (both the Tarkovsky and Soderbergh versions). I think you’ll like SUNSHINE as well.
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Tambay A Obenson
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