Danny Boyle, The UK’s most successful director and surely one of the most important continues his relationship with writer Alex Garland with his new movie Sunshine. The earth is dying and a ship containing a massive nuclear payload is sent to dispatch it’s massive force to the heart of the sun. On route they take a detour to a ship, which failed trying to enforce the same mission.
Mixing genre, Sci-Fi with horror, this bright burning meditation enables an ensemble cast to look into the eyes of the sun and feel the heat. It’s oddly humourless for Boyle who never missed an ironic beat in his previous work but then again saving Earth is no laughing matter.
Visually it’s probably one of the finest films to have ever been made out of the UK and the cgi, greenscreen and model work are all significant technical achievements. The score from Underworld helps the movie change gear and the performances are all solid. But, there’s still something missing here; The Soderbergh re-make of Solaris kept us in the mind of Clooney’s grief and never let us forget why we should care. It worked beautifully. In Sunshine, we’re with them all and the movie needed to be seen through the eyes of one of them, it needed to make us care more, be in it, feel it, but somehow you feel like you are looking in on a world rather than sitting there beside them.
Sunshine is a thing of beauty that clearly put it’s large budget on the screen but Sci-Fi works best from one persons pov, which becomes our view of the future, therefore we never ask questions about logic and rational. Sunshine is a fine film in many ways that missed the most important beat, the heart, but it’s full of great stuff from an accomplished director, great DOP and fine cast.