Sunshine

(originally posted on July 20, 2007)

This is a non-canon review for Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which I saw a couple weeks ago and also a couple weeks before that. For me to see a movie twice for free means one of two things: I fell asleep or it was really good. Well, shockingly enough, it’s the latter! I stayed awake through the whole thing both times! *Pats self on ass*

Sunshine tells the story of several other sci-fi films, coming off mainly as a sort of cross between Armageddon and Event Horizon, only with more intelligence (read: less fun) than those films. All the staples of the space disaster movie are here: the shields that need to manually be fixed from the outside, the airlock malfunctions, the ‘I thought they disappeared/died x amount of years ago” spaceship that they come across, etc. But somehow the film feels fresh and exciting.

Most of the credit must go to the cast. In addition to Rose Byrne (mmmm) and Michelle Yeoh (mmmm, still!), there’s a less creepy than usual Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans (a guy who SHOULD be annoying but dammit, the guy’s a good actor and an engaging screen presence), and Cliff Curtis, redeeming himself from his awful performance in Die Hard Faux. Plus the guy I didn’t like from Ringu. He’s damn good here too, and his death scene (it’s early on) contains some of the finest movie score in history.

The only thing I don’t like about the movie, besides the near total lack of oil drillers, is the ending. A character who has been too close to the sun for too long goes nuts and begins avid farting his way around the ship killing folks. The attack scenes are annoyingly shot/edited, and it’s tonally a 180 from the rest of the film. Luckily, it more or less gets back on track for the final few minutes, though I didn’t care for a repeat of a key line of dialogue that we heard only like an hour before (this isn’t a long movie). We’re not stupid! Well, I am, but even I “got” it without needing to hear the line again.

Otherwise: Solid, smarter than usual sci-fi entertainment with a bit of horror thrown in for good immeasure. And Rose Byrne.

What say you?