Sunshine - Review

Stunning set pieces do not a movie make. Case in point: Danny Boyle's Sunshine, a heady, often spellbinding science fiction thriller that jettisons dramatic credibility in its sketchily conceived and executed third act. Overly solemn and weighted down with portentousness, Boyle's disappointing follow-up to the ebullient charmer Millions (2005) has neither the jazzy energy nor the full-throttle narrative drive that distinguishes his best films, like Trainspotting (1996) and 28 Days Later (2003). That Boyle and his co-screenwriter Alex Garland ultimately take such an ill-advised narrative detour into contrivance is mystifying, for Sunshine clearly had the potential to be a classic of the science fiction film genre, as gripping as it is provocative.

The basic concept of Sunshine glimmers with promise. Fifty years from now, our sun is dying. Unless the eight-member crew of the aptly named Icarus II can reignite the sun by detonating a massive, nuclear device in its interior, all life on Earth will perish. Led by the stalwart Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), the Icarus II crew members embark on what may be a suicide mission; seven years earlier, the Icarus I vanished before reaching its target. Although Capa (Cillian Murphy), the Icarus II physicist, attempts to safeguard against disaster by calculating the ever-shifting risk-assessment of the mission, neither he nor anyone else could have anticipated that they'd pick up a faint distress signal from the Icarus I.

Overriding the objections of Mace (Chris Evans), the crew's volatile engineer, Kaneda orders Cassie (Rose Byrne), the mission pilot, to rendezvous with the long-lost ship in search of survivors. Almost immediately, however, calamity strikes the Icarus II, due to an oversight by Trey (Benedict Wong), the sleep-deprived navigator. Despite this near-fatal setback, the crippled Icarus II continues on course for its predecessor, where the increasingly embattled crew encounters an unexpected threat-not just to the mission, but their very survival.

In a recent New York Times article, Boyle and Garland expressed their desire to make Sunshine "a head trip," closer in tone to metaphysical-themed science fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) than escapist, special effects extravaganzas in the Star Wars (1977) mold. To a degree, Boyle and Garland succeed, for there's a crypto-religious undercurrent to Sunshine that becomes more pronounced in the film's second half, when a character's religious-fueled mania provides the dramatic catalyst for the film's descent into bloody violence. It's a potent conceit that might have worked if the filmmakers hadn't introduced it so clumsily into their narrative, which effectively degenerates into an outer space version of a "slasher" flick, albeit one that flirts with profundity.

Sunshine is also an atypically humorless entry from Boyle, who's never made a film this oddly devoid of personality. The crew of the Icarus II—Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, and Michelle Yeoh round out the underutilized cast—are little more than ciphers, adding to the body count. As a result, you don't form much of an emotional attachment to any of them, even as some of them meet their demise in spectacular, nerve-fraying scenes that confirms Boyle's flair for viscerally-charged imagery that's both disturbing and mesmerizing. Indeed, there are so many arresting scenes in Sunshine that it's all the more disappointing that Boyle's latest film sadly turns out to be less than the sum of its dazzling parts.