Sunshine: Alerta Solar

I'm not going to drop any spoilers here. I will simply say that for the first hour this movie is superb, with an excellent cast, a beautiful orchestral score, and a solid script based on a wonderfully grandiose Big Sci-Fi Idea.

However, an hour in things begin to degrade, with a couple of poor plot decisions that could have been forgiven if they had just moved on. But an hour and 16 minutes in they double down on one particularly bad plot choice, and the film degenerates into horror movie cliches (yes, horror) which simply have no place here and ruined what would have been and unusually sublime and moving science fiction drama. I would love to know what in the world they were thinking, allowing the script to devolve and go in a direction that does not do justice to all of the other labor and excellent creative decisions that went into other aspects of the movie. What a shame.

Sunshine cost £20 million. Jerry Bruckheimer and his Hollywood cohorts must be shaking their heads in disbelief. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, British born and bred, have outdone America's effects laden finest, and at a mere fraction of the price. Armageddon ($140 million) and Pirates of The Caribbean 2 ($225 million) have nothing, nothing on the majestic visuals that Sunshine offers. From the jaw dropping opening sequence to the fantastically realised final moments, Boyle's latest is a mighty treat for the eyes.

But of course, effects do not make a film. You need only consider the two aforementioned Bruckheimer blowouts for proof. But happily, behind the blinding visuals, Sunshine has a violently beating heart. One that offers absolutely no let up, that gains speed and then gains a little more, before finally threatening cardiac arrest. You can't help but live and breath every moment of the crew's breathless existence.

The year is 2057 and a select group of astronauts are given that most trifling of tasks. The sun is dying. Drop a bomb in it. Save all of mankind. And to top it all, on a ship rather ominously named 'Icarus II'. Add inevitable inter crewmember tension and you have a rather heated situation. The sweaty crew are played wonderfully by a decidedly un-starry, but talented cast. Cilian Murphy, taking the lead role as the ship's resident physicist Cappa, the only member who has the wherewithal to actually drop the bomb, is coolly enigmatic as ever, the blue orbs of his eyes forming a nice counterpoint to the never far rather redder orb of the sun. You can't help but feel he isn't particularly challenged as an actor, but nevertheless he provides a suitably ambivalent, androgynous and faintly unsettling core to the proceedings.

Perhaps more impressive is Chris Evans. Recently seen in a similarly hot headed role in the undercooked comic book adaptation 'Fantastic Four', he consistently snatches scenes from Murphy as engineer Mace, about as volatile and fiery as Cappa is composed and cool. Without Evan's energetic performance, the film would sink into an anti-libidinal quag. Mace's emotive instability injects pace when it's needed and brings some welcome variety to the otherwise glum faces. Evans is surely on the brink of big things. A small quibble would be that there are perhaps a few too many characters; meaning that a fair share of the cast never really gets a chance for development, which is irritating, as one gets the feeling that there's a lot of wasted potential.

Another chink in Sunshine's spacesuit, is in many places, Alex Garland's screenplay. Whilst he has a remarkable talent for creating intense psychological tension, of which there is plenty in Sunshine, his philosophising is much less satisfactory. This is not to say he doesn't play with some fascinating ideas. With the crew circling so close to the Sun, to the giver of life, Garland begins ask the biggest of questions. Is there something, something inestimably greater than ourselves, something that could create such a magnificent star, or are we, like the sun, simply dust? It's a great idea, but for the larger part of the film, it seems oddly shoehorned into what is at base a sci-fi pot-boiler. In fact these ideas are better expressed in Boyle's imagery. Time and time again we see members of the crew staring aghast at the immensity of the burning ball of gas and dust in front of them. The relationship between giver and taker is better explored here than in any line of Garland's.

The structure of his screenplay is also a little unwieldy. The first hour and a half play as an intense psychological study - the pace at times painfully weighty as the tension is ratcheted up ever higher. The film works beautifully here - it may not introduce anything particularly new; claustrophobic stress is certainly nothing new in sci-fi, but it follows genre conventions with such panache and artistry that it's difficult to fault. However, come the final 20 minutes, Sunshine takes a rather abrupt and unwelcome turn. A pretty hammy (not to mention poorly explained) plot twist is ushered in and suddenly we find ourselves in a horror film - a clichéd one at that. To say much more would spoil things, but needless to say, had the filmmakers showed a little restraint in the closing moments, they would have had a real classic on their hands. When the film ditches pretensions, and sticks with the clammy, slow burn thrills it excels at, it's fantastic. When it descends into predictable melodrama, it's still alright, it's just disappointing considering what we know it's capable of. As such it's remarkably well shot, superbly rendered, occasionally poignant and occasionally flawed. Whatever the case, Sunshine is never far from entirely thrilling, and, all said and done, film recommendations don't come much higher than that.

How would we cope under the most extreme circumstances imaginable? That is the question posed by Danny Boyle's latest offering, and the answer seems to be that anybody can be pushed over the edge, it is just a question of what and how much it takes.

Danny Boyle seems unable to settle on a genre specialty, but it also seems that whatever he turns his hand to he can make work (with the exception of romantic comedy - A Life Less Ordinary anyone?). In his latest, the sun is dying, and we join the 2nd attempt to try and restart the star by delivering a nuclear bomb to kick-start it. Having been alone in space for the past 16 months, the eight-man crew is approaching its destination, but nerves are starting to fray. Then they pick up a signal rom the ship that made the first, unsuccessful, attempt. Inevitably they go and investigate, and problems ensue. When the inevitable disaster occurs, jeopardising the mission, we begin to see how people deal with extreme circumstances, and how their sanity is affected, in different ways. Elements are recognisable from Alien, Solaris and Event Horizon, and the film certainly benefits from all of those influences. The claustrophobia, the understated technology, the dark corridors, the unseen menace, all recognisable but effectively used.

This is not a typical science fiction per se. There are no aliens, no space battles, and no ultra-advanced technology on show. Instead Boyle chooses a more philosophical tangent, leading to questions of exactly what defines humanity, and the value of a single life weighed against the future of mankind.

The casting is excellent, with many recognisable but no particularly famous faces, the biggest names being Batman Begins' Cillian Murphy and Fantastic Four's Chris Evans. This lack of star names, combined with a cast of only the eight crew somehow makes the loneliness and the feeling of being a huge distance from home with a long way to go seem even more real. We really begin to feel with the crew as they try to hold it together long enough to complete their vital mission. Cillian Murphy in particular is a piece of inspired casting, as in many of his roles he has always appeared on the very brink of insanity anyway, so he has the close-to-crazy act down to a tee.

The CGI of the sun is extremely impressive, particularly considering the relatively low budget of the film, and the simple but intense story has viewers on the edge of the seat virtually from first act to last. The suspense is built gradually but extremely effectively, to the extent where you can feel your sanity heading the way of the astronauts' as the conclusion approaches with increasing speed.

Overall a very effective study in what a tenuous thing sanity is when faced with huge odds and a great threat. Thrilling, gripping and thought-provoking, and another genre nailed by Boyle - now if only he could crack that pesky rom-com!

A brilliant movie for so many reasons (my gf had an entirely different take on this but I loved the discussion it opened, which eventually brought me here). The kind of cast who each can shine in their own right, visuals that would still be considered top notch a decade and a half later, a goosebump inducing sound/music score and a concept that is thought provoking and shines a light to so many aspects of humanity. To some a slightly shaky 3rd act and while it does feel like someone else took the reigns for 20mins or so of its direction, it's brought together in a stunning finale. The overwhelming enormity of space vs humanity's drive to dictate our destiny and the spectrum of characters earth entrusts to save the planet play together in a beautiful, bleak way. If a film can have me still thinking about concepts, faith and morality after and the score genuinely have an emotional impact, as a director I could say I've done a job well done.

I loved Danny Boyle's "Shallow Grave" I thought there was a Polanskian, Hitchcockian, Chabrolian creature trying to come out. I was wrong - it happens more often than not - but Danny is moving away from me or I from him, in any case we're like strangers now. What made me love "Shallow Grave" were the characters and the way he introduced them to us. I felt involved, totally involved. In "Sunshine" the detachment was such that I couldn't even follow. Impressive, virtuoso film-making to be sure but cold an impersonal. I could watch Cillian Murphy's face for hours without getting bored but I got bored looking at his face because I didn't have a clue who he was and after a while, I didn't care. Mr Boyle, go back to graves, human graves, earth graves, please, do it for me.