Sunshine Review

Bottom-Line:  For the most part I found Sunshine entertaining.  

I like Science Fiction; especially those stories set in cold reaches of outer space.  There is something about outer space that holds an endless fascination for me.  So when I heard about Sunshine (2007) a futuristic movie about a mission to the dying sun, naturally I was intrigued, never mind the fact that our sun is not set to die for another, oh, 5 billion years from now!

Despite that one glaring plot pothole, over all Sunshine is a decent movie, full of gee-wiz special effects, and creditable if not somewhat staid acting.  And while the main premise, saving mankind for the millionth time, is rather trite, the Icarus II is one cool spaceship.                 

The Story

Sunshine takes place in the not-too-distant future.  Planet Earth is in the grips of another ice age brought on this time by a dying sun (factoid: when the Sun actually starts to die it will increase steadily in luminosity not decrease).  Mankind, in a bid to save itself, sends a mission to the sun onboard a spacecraft called Icarus, which has a payload in the form of a very large hydrogen bomb.  The hydrogen bomb is to be propelled into the sun setting off a chain reaction, thereby reseeding the sun with, well, hydrogen; in the movie they described it as a mini Big Bang.  The mission fails for unknown reasons.

On board Icarus II is a team of eight astronauts, who have spent the last two years together, and are, well, getting on each other's nerves.  Then they happen upon Icarus I, and decide to have a look see, but to do so they have to change course and that means altering the massive metal shield that protects the spacecraft and her payload.   However the navigator failed to do so and when the Icarus changes course and exposes part of the ship to the suns explosive heat, the mission takes a very wrong interstellar turn.         

My Viewpoint

For the most part I found Sunshine entertaining; it is visually stunning, and a special effects masterpiece.  I had to of course suspend reality for the duration of the movie, but hey isn't that what the science fiction genre is all about.  Granted some of the movie was over the top, and I still don't quite understand the whole God angle (I do but...) with the man who was perpetually out-of-focus and on a murderous rampage that permeate the latter third of this film, but hey the shots of the outside of the Icarus II were spectacular, as were all of the special effect in this movie. 

The actors in Sunshine seemed almost like an afterthought despite a few notable names like Michelle Yeoh (Memoirs of a Geisha) who portrays Corazon, the mission doctor, Rose Byrne (Damages) who portrays Cassie, and Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) who portrays Capa, the mission payload specialist.  Capa and Cassie get the most face time in the movie, though their character are not examined in any detail that would make one invest any emotional thread in them at all. There was a hint of sexual tension between the two, but it never developed into anything remotely interesting.  The mission crew is just short background props, they are abstract, and I didn't care about any of them; my interest was in the ship and mission.              

Though the central theme of the movie, a dying sun in the Earth near future is implausible (funny how I keep coming back to that), Sunshine was nonetheless enjoyable from a purely visual standpoint.