Most people know that there are two types of sci-fi films: the high-minded or “hard” science fiction and the action-packed, scientifically inaccurate science fantasy. For example, 2001: A Space Odyssey can be considered one of the former and Star Wars classified as one of the latter. Sunshine is also of the high-minded variety, a film that tries to take the science and the psychology seriously. And from the writer-director team of 28 Days Later, it’s all but a guarantee that what will unfurl on screen is anything but the ordinary.



The movie takes place several years in the future, on board the spaceship Icarus II, a self-sustaining craft attached to a nuke the size of Manhattan on a perilous quest to restart our dying sun. This is the second and final such mission after the first Icarus disappeared in the “dead zone”, a radiation field that makes communication with Earth impossible, and there’s not enough fissionable material on Earth to make a third attempt. The very fate of humanity rests in the hands of eight people, but being human they’re capable of bad decisions, like the one to investigate a signal from the derelict Icarus I drifting out past Mercury orbit.



Director Danny Boyle has assembled an impressive international cast led by Cillian Murphy and including Cliff Curtis, Michelle Yoeh, Rose Byrne and Chris Evans. A strong cast is important because Boyle isolates the action to events in space, rather than treat us to intercut scenes of “the war at home.” Boyle’s focus is people and he seems to go out of his way to not use effects. Like TV’s Battlestar Galactica, the set design seems purposefully created to evoke our current level of technology, but with enough evolutionary touches to imply future without going overboard like the Lost in Space movie.



I concede though that the films not perfect, some of the characters seemed oddly detatched and disinteresting at times and I’m sure whether it’s because the script is trying to make a point about madness in the isolation of space. Also, there was the nagging feeling that I had seen this show somewhere before, not an outright rip-off per se, but there are certain plot elements that made me think of Event Horizon. I think too that the script suffers from an obscene amount of ambiguity, which may be troublesome to a few of us who are more literal minded, but it makes the film more discussable than the average.



Although not perfect, I found Sunshine mesmerizing and enthralling to watch. Danny Boyle is such a master of creating tension, that you barely notice the time past, and he’s such a nihilist, the finale of the movie is very much in doubt right up until its harrowing conclusion. Masterfully realized, smartly executed and great to look at, Sunshine is a big picture story rather than just being a big picture.