Sunshine

may232007_sunshine.jpgSunshine is a story about a group of scientists and astronauts sent out to space 50 years from now to fix the sun via exploding a bomb into it. First they have to get there of course, and no they don’t resort to doing it at night, so let’s get that old, old joke over with before you even start thinking it, and to those who wouldn’t have thought of it, my apologies, but consider my getting it over with as a favor to you just the same.

At any rate, the drama here is the actual getting there and ‘delivering the payload’, which we hear very often throughout the film. Cillian Murphy, the guy I suspect who’s gonna play the Joker in the next Batman series, plays a Physicist who has to decide if they should check out whatever happened to the first attempt 8 years before them, a similar ship named Icarus (theirs is Icarus II), whom they happen to discover mysteriously floating around in space – completely functional – along the way. These being the practical scientists that they are, they decide that two chances at exploding a bomb into the sun are better than one, and proceed to variate their mission into fetching it. But of course it turns out, as it often does, the mystery ship isn’t as innocent as they think, and it proceeds thereon to make their path that much harder as they go along their way.

Now I’ll be honest with you when I say I don’t think I did a very good job at hiding the spoiler in the paragraph before this. In fact, I may as well have given up the story altogether, even if I didn’t say exactly what they found in that other ship. Surely you will not need a College degree to discern the fact that something dastardly is lurking in there, hence providing the ‘Thriller’ part in the ‘Adventure, Sci Fi, Thriller’ description of this film.

And so with that, and rather unfortunately, ‘predictable’ can be used to describe this. Predictable like how when we were kids we would make bets as to which characters would die in a Friday the 13th movie, just after the first act when everyone gets introduced. Old habits die hard, and I think I got 2 out of 5 wrong, but the fact that some films make you feel like you’re just sitting there waiting for them to get slaughtered can get you pretty angsty in your seat, and might make you want to check your cellphone for text messages or talk to your companion far more often than you should.

Fortunately however, this movie keeps you glued, obviously not at the fantastic plot, but at the visual imagery, and distinct style it carries throughout. I’m not really sure why, but sci – fi thrillers such as the venerable Alien, Aliens, and uhmm, Alien Resurrection, need to maintain a unique ‘look and feel’, perhaps owing to the fact that since they’re all set in space and in the future, the set designers pretty much are allowed to go all out with their imagination.

And the set, props, production design, are what makes this movie stand out. It is, in fact, rather spectacular. Every little tiny detail is a well thought out artist’s rendition jumping out at you. Artists whom, I’m sure, had experience on comic books and other arenas as well. Computer rooms look like hi – tech renditions of computer rooms. Command centers look like command centers, an ‘Earth room’, where the crew goes to from time to time to experience a 3d virtual ‘Earth’ should they occasionally need it for therapeutic reasons, looks exactly how we would imagine it to be.

In conclusion, Sunshine is a movie that’ll make your $3,000.00 flat screen TV and audio setup worth the money. You’re gonna feel that every pixel is getting to you in complete 1080 High definition. But as a compelling story? It scores only a few points. Murphy is a terrific actor, the idea of a ‘last stand we won’t go away quietly’ human race crying out for it’s survival gets to you ocassionally, and the cast, notably Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans and Hiroyuki Sanada, are worth remembering.

For a really rolicking scary time in space, I’ll still go for the 1997 Event Horizon, of which this movie shares a great deal with in terms of plot. The jaw dropping visual imagery will guarantee this a place beside such classics as 1989’s The Abyss, 1998’s Sphere, and even two anime personal favorites, the 1998 Akira and the 1995 Ghost in the Shell.

Otherwise however, it’s thin story and somewhat laughable bad guy weigh it down.

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