Danny Boyle's Sunshine Film Review

The ages that have passed since a proper sci-fi flick graced our collective screens melt away into cosmic flotsam and jetsam as soon as you spot the authentic looking starship models that open Sunshine. Coupled with that trusty old whooshing roar filmmakers associate with space travel, not only do they bring back fond memories of more innocent days but also herald the arrival of one solid interplanetary escapade.

Not coy in the least about its sources, Sunshine mixes the claustrophobia so well-liked in Alien with Event Horizon's sublime horror and Solaris' psychological desolation. Put together, these ingredients work well for Danny Boyle and company, much more so than in 28 Days Later, which shares some of the themes revisited here.

Sunshine gets its name from a last-ditch effort to re-start the sun. Old Sol is dying faster than anticipated, and in some unnamed near future era the world has come around to collaboratively launch missions aimed at saving humanity from a fate worse than frosting over to death.

Among the movie's greatest assets is its insistence on not showing much of the situation giving rise to this predicament or the preliminary effort that has gone into resolving the issue. This bestows upon it a delectably detached, isolated mood perfectly in tandem with the menacing experience that is flying through deep space towards a showdown with the entire world's looming demise.

It's all up to the crew of Icarus II, a large and seemingly very advanced ship carrying a bomb the size of Manhattan. The device is supposed to fan the sun's no longer burning heart, if the math and physics are up to snuff. The craft, shielded by a vast screen to deflect the solar winds and radiation, makes its ponderous way onwards on the wake of Icarus I, the first mission that went AWOL some seven years prior to the story's beginning.