Sunshine ('07)

Dir. - Danny Boyle
Running Time - 107 mins
Star. - Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh

This movie is a strange beast. Its a mixture of several things; 2001: A Space Odyssey and Aliens (two of the best sci-fi movies ever made) and Event Horizon (one of the more eerie but ultimately flawed sci-fi flicks i can remember.) The prior is what makes this movie one of the more memorable sci-fi outings in recent memory.

The sun is dying out and in and effort to save all of man kind from an ice age and the certain death of all of human kind, the diverse team of scientist and astronauts aboard the Icarus II must re-ignite the sun with the gigantic neutron bomb attached to their ship, this is after the Icarus I failed to do so, and went completely missing in space. After passing Mercury the ship picks up the Icarus I's distress beacon and decides to alter its course slightly to investigate. What follows, as one would probably guess, is a series of really fuckin bad luck...the shit really hits the fan.

The story is great and completely engaging, but the few flaws the movie has come in the last 30 mins or so, when it really fuckin counts. SPOILERS. From the second the disgruntled charred captain of Icarus I shows up seemingly out of no where, it starts to get a little weird. You never really fully see the man, the camera jilts when ever you see his charred body, he's hell bent on stopping Icarus II from delivering the payload...much like, as it turns out, he did to the Icarus I, which he sabotaged and killed off the crew. His reasoning? Something to the effect of this is what god wanted to happen, god doesn't want human kind to live anymore, the sun is dying out for a divine reason. While he ends up lending to the movie a pretty chilling and outright scary element, it really seemed too late in the game to introduce him, and his overarching biblical agenda. It felt too much like it was a add on into the movie for Danny Boyle or the screenwriter to throw some of their own political voice in there.

While this aspect of the film didn't completely ruin the movie for me, i think I really could of done without it. I really think this movie would of had potential to be a classic if Boyle just made the movie about the Icarus II crew, and their journey to the sun, and their ultimate martyrdom for the human race.

As we've seen with ever other Danny Boyle outing (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) the man is quite the visionary director. The films visual attributes are very reminiscent of the sprawling awe inspiring stuff Kubrick showed us with 2001, but with a more modern touch ala Cameron's Alien movies. Needless to say everything about the way this movie looks is nothing short of beautiful and completely breathtaking up until the final shot of the film. And to me this is what ultimately saved it, its pros outweigh its cons, its definitely worth 2 hours or your time. B+