Sunshine (2007)

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: Cliff Curtis, Chipo Chung, Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh

More info: IMDb

Tagline: If the sun dies, so do we.

Plot: In the future, the sun is dying and Earth lives another glacial period. After the failure of the Icarus Mission, a team of eight astronauts are sent to the sun in the Icarus II Mission to explode a weapon generating a supernova within the sun in the last hope of planet Earth. However, when a crew-member commits a mistake in the operation of the aircraft shield, he jeopardizes the survival of the group.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

This is a frustrating film. It looks absolutely gorgeous. The spacescapes, Mercury, Sun, etc look jaw-droppingly amazing on Blu-ray. That's largely what makes up the 6/10 score. The other part is due to the very good first two acts. It's the final third that drops the ball and all but ruins the film for me. I just watched it a second time in as many years and I'm officially through with it.


Look, for some crazy-ass reason I was willing to suspend my disbelief that there's a chance we could supply enough of a nuclear payload into the sun to jump start it back into its previous glory. That's a HUGE leap of faith, but OK. I just couldn't get behind what happens in the final act. For some reason that was too much. I was no longer on board. Add to that the EVERYTHING that happens in this movie outside of the spacecraft makes a noise. When we see the lights turn off (from outside the ship) there's a noise for fuck's sake. Mercury just flies around the sun. I didn't realize it takes less than an hour to orbit the sun. Whatever. Where's the fucking science? On one hand they try to be scientific with some of the little things but the big things, the obvious ones, they just said fuck it and figured no one would notice or care. Well, I care. There's so much to nitpick it's not even funny.



I did find the first half compelling. I thoroughly enjoyed the psychological aspect to their predicament of being in space for so long and having to live together without going batshit insane. I thought they handled that very well...until the end. Ugh. I'm just going to stop now before I get angry all over again. I wanted to love this film...I really did. I'm sorry, SUNSHINE, it's not me...it's you. You could have been an intelligent, thought-provoking film (think MOON (2009)) but you're nothing more than a big Hollywood movie with far more potential than you could ever possibly fulfill. Here's a couple of bucks for cab fare.