Screenhead

Depending on where you live, this will be either a review or a very early preview. Sunshine, Danny Boyle’s new film, is out in Europe and most of the world this weekend. However, in the US the film was set for a March release, and has now been pushed back to September. While many of you who were sucked in by the early marketing campaign may now feel furious that you have another 6 month wait. I can only assume the distributor had a quick change of heart when looking at the release schedule and realised that the film would be overshadowed by 300, Premonition, Wild Hogs, and Dead Silence. It’s all about the money, kids.

Sunshine is set several decades in the future. A select crew of scientists and engineers aboard a ship, known as the Icarus 2 (hopeful title, that), are on their way to deliver a giant nuclear device. The sun is dying, and unless the nuke works its magic, the human race will die with it. As the ship gets closer to the sun, they encounter the Icarus 1, the first attempt to save the sun, which mysteriously failed, and debate whether to rendezvous or not. And then things get complicated, and through a series of incidents both accidental and deliberate, all hell breaks loose.

From the very opening moments, you’ll be sucked in. Although the special effects are not the most spectacular, they are certainly the most effective I’ve seen in a while. The precarious nature of travelling through space and the frailty of our life while there is a concept very evident throughout. Plus, the film’s sound design is one of the most distinct in years, with resounding blips and creaks as the ship hurtles into unknown territory.

Story-wise, it’s clear that the hero is Capa (played by Cillian Murphy). He’s a young physician who is facing that fact that he may not return home, and cannot know if the plan will work. He ends up making the difficult choices as the crew face each new crisis. It’s not a particularly interesting character, but the surrounding crew help to add to a sense of refreshment when it comes to characterisation. Chris Evans (not him, him) plays the cocky engineer Mace who doesn’t end up screwing the mission through hasty decisions. As much as we loathe to admit it, brilliance and arrogance skip hand in hand, and this type of person has been neglected in cinematic characters. The excellent Cliff Curtis plays the mildly eccentric ship psychiatrist and self-appointed philosopher (hence the name, perhaps?) Searle. While Searle’s role is minimal, there are insinuations that regardless of the choices made during the course of the movie, Searle would have ensured the same fate would have been met. This is a very subtle point many will fail to pick up on or care about, but it does make the film slightly more sophisticated.

Despite all this, the film is far from innovative or even memorable. The problem is that even though it’s one of the few films to be concerned with the sun, the events that occur throughout the film are just too ordinary. In interviews Boyle had referred to acknowledging the classic of sci-fi. But Boyle has directly lifted from several movies of the genre (from the airlock scene of 2001, to the chase/running scenes of Alien, with even a nod to, dare I say it, Event Horizon) so much as to make the film feel rather stale in its delivery. Towards the end of the movie, Sunshine also floats away from sci-fi and delves into horror, with the arrival of a rather crispy villain, and while the tension is maintained, the satisfaction is not.

Your enjoyment of Sunshine is going to depend on your expectations. Considering the large role that scientific research played in the film’s press releases, you may go in expecting something highly innovated, and will leave disappointed. However, if you watch the movie expecting a decent thriller, you’re going to be very pleased. Sunshine is a movie that thinks its 2001, but is much more similar to 2010.

For those of you in the US, don’t fret too much, for Sunshine isn’t the monumental event that it would like to be. So sit tight, restrain yourself from Limewire, and wait for a well-made thriller that deserves to be watched in the cinema.

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