Sunshine: Alerta Solar

Danny Boyle has rebooted the sci-fi genre to a magnificent start. "Sunshine", clearly inspired by the classics "Alien", "2001: A Space Odyssey" and many more, but brought to the modern age.

The plot sounds ridiculous at first, but once you get into it, you really get into it! A crew of 8 are sent on a mission to set a bomb in the sun as it is dying and the earth is suffering a solar winter. 7 years before that there was a similar mission, but that failed. They find the lost spacecraft and decide to board it, but a fatal incident occurred that lost them their oxygen supply. There is no longer enough for all of them to get back to earth alive. But there is enough for few; so who will take the plunge and who will survive? And will their sanities stay intact to last them the epic journey?

With such a small cast there was surprisingly no weak performances. Everyone had the desired screen-time to be able to care for them. But the characters anger and frustration caught up with them after being on the ship for 16 months, they begin to take acts of violence on each other and feel stressed so they forget vital aspects that could cost them their lives. You have to remember that they will save mankind if their mission is a success; that's a lot of pressure. And the film feels like a lot of pressure due to the intenseness it creates.

Boyle's skills to create tension is impressive. He uses special techniques to make us feel claustrophobic and more importantly, to panic. Close ups, angles, blurs, stretches, stops, flashes all add up to the effect. The effect of feeling the heat. It burns. But in between those scenes you get to see the relaxing side of space. The view from outside. Its beautiful, truly dazzling and spectacular.

The score is incredible. During the beginning its like a calm 'breather'. But then its turns into a beat. A fast beat. And your heart joins it. Pumping away to make you feel more insecure. Very intense.

Boyle really proves he has talent for different genres in this modern sci-fi to be classic showing how people do the most inhumane thing to survive. I highly recommend it.

Rewatches over the years have revealed its flaws and clichés but it's still enjoyable and nostalgic for me.

8/10

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.

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.

With a suitably international and diverse cast to simulate the equivalent crew onboard the Icarus II ("Icarus I" didn't fare so well), director Danny Boyle fledges a science fiction that gains momentum at its very first image – and does not halt until the end credits roll. To be perfectly frank, this is one of the most unbearably exciting films for whose entire duration I have ever squirmed in my seat for at the theatre.

On a mission to re-ignite the sun by detonating a bomb ("the size of Manhattan island", Cillian Murphy's physicist nods to American audiences and cause me to suffer horrible flashbacks to Armaggeddon's "it's the size of Texas" assessment) human lives are expendable and rationalized by rank. There are scientists, astronauts and various specialists on Icarus II who are all poised on the brink of sacrificing themselves for the greater good of mankind. Diverse in the sense that there are both men and women, and few characters are 'black or white' (morally, and physically), it does puzzle me that New Zealanders, Aussies and Irishmen have been arbitrarily converted into Americans. The crew is nevertheless highly impressive and professional, with a few minor exceptions for plot-propelling purposes, like when someone does something very stupid.

There is noticeably a tremendous visual sense throughout "Sunshine" with a screen that is awash with sparkling explosions and each frame saturated with bright colours and dimmed contrasts. There is no genre-transcending perhaps, and most probably its visuals are under the mercy of dating effects, but for now this is truly the crème de la crème of science fiction, take my word for it. Even the cinematography within the spaceship alleys and chambers is compelling and sweeps through Icarus II with great tracking shots. Amongst other films, Danny Boyle was inspired by Das Boot and certainly there are traces of the same claustrophobia underpinning the setting, but ultimately he opted for a more habitable environment to make it believable (like humanity would ship off its only hope with a crummy, crowded old vessel).

To justify the occasional bouts of sci-fi clichés, I'd like to firstly point out that it's not like "Sunshine" traffics in stereotypes or resorts to formulaic elements, and secondly that I believe certain clichés have evolved for a reason – they quite clearly stand the test of time. There are within science fiction some staples that are simply necessary to define its genre, such as the dutiful human sacrifices to up the drama, the internal mutinies to instill the uncertainty in the operation, the nightmarish conditions onboard the ship to suck you in, the technical jargon of velocities and shield angles that spits like bullet-fire to give the film a firm scientific footing, and finally the epic music to elevate suspense. "Sunshine" incorporates and melts together all of the aforementioned, but in militantly non-formulaic ways that only add to the experience. As a potent example, there isn't just pedestrian classical tunes recycled from 2001 and filtered through {insert rote Hollywood composer here}'s score – it is puffed full of beautiful piano crescendos that are almost incongruous to the sci-fi vibe, and the cumulative effect is wonderful.

"Sunshine" is sporadically blemished by minor faults, such as when Murphy's Law is being followed a bit too rigorously to up the excitement. Luckily, all of this is washed away or camouflaged when Boyle serves up his next goosebumps-inducing, gasp-eliciting spectacle – be it a horror twist or an impossibly epic action stunt. On the topic of the former, and clearly the chiasma at which "Alien" comparisons have been drawn, there is a magnificently creepy horror/mystery vibe interlacing the story in space. On top of this, Danny Boyle also dabbles in existentialism (a little too much if you ask me), making this into one of the most ambitious sci-fi turns ever made. In this way, maybe "Sunshine" is not primed to collect awards or even serve as meat for mainstream Hollywood, but I think it's safe to crown it the "Alien" of the 21st century.

8 out of 10

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.