Sunshine  

Review: written 2007

The mediocre bits stolen from every great scifi movie you can think of

I'd love to say this was the great bits taken from all the great sci-fi movies.. but somehow this does not scale even those trifling heights. It shoots high, as a thought provoking yet exciting scifi, in the mission to save earth category. But ultimately, though full of great character acting and quirky casting, a masterpiece is not quite pulled off.. merely a film that reminds you of masterpieces.

The actors are a wonderfully believable eclectic bunch, with the physicist played by Cillian Murphy at the core of the story. Effects and sets are effective and draw you into a believable scenario... Earth is doomed due to its fading star, the only hope to reignite the star is the Icarus 2, carrying the worlds last remaining fissile resources, a huge bomb to create `a star within a star' and save Earth. The rub is, a previous identical expedition was lost with no explanation . After setting up this `Event Horizon' type scenario, this goes through some terrific set pieces which make the movie worth watching. Unfortunately it does not go anywhere, until it climaxes in an ending which is neither explained, nor explainable, and feels rather tacked on to round the film off in a somewhat conventional way.

Overall then, this sets itself up as a meaningful multilevel sci-fi, but ultimately proves to be quite insubstantial, even though well polished.