Sunshine

I had been looking forward to watching Sunshine for quite some time and missed it when it was in the cinema. It is directed by Danny Boyle [Trainspotting, 28 Days Later] from a screenplay by Alex Garland [The Beach], who also collaborated on 28 Days Later, so I had high hopes for this film.

Sunshine is set in 2057. The Sun, for some unexplained reason, is failing and Earth has entered an ice age. A spacecraft, the Icarus II, is launched which carries a massive thermonuclear bomb which must travel to the sun and drop it onto the surface in order to re-ignite the core.

It has an excellent premise and in the initial stages the film unfolds showcasing the personalities and tasks each crew-member has been assigned, with the added pressures of the job due to the fact that eight people have been sharing the same space for years as they make their slow journey to the sun.

However, half-way through, it veers off on a tangent and becomes plain silly. The genre changes from space drama to action/thriller but essential ingredients to keep the viewer interested are missing and you begin to care less and less about the characters.

Despite fantastic visuals, the onscreen action is lacklustre and about two-thirds of the way in, the whole thing becomes very messy, the plot turns completely ridiculous and by the time the credits rolled, I'd given up entirely.

It's a real shame because Sunshine should have been a great film if it had stuck to a realistic plot and not dabbled in sequences you would find in trashy action flicks reducing the goodwill built up in the first half only to have it thrown back in your face at the end.

I would give this film 4.1 solar flares out of 10