The sun is dying. A group of eight astronauts is sent aboard the interstellar spacecraft Icarus II to restart the star before the Earth as we know it is turned into a frozen rock floating in the cosmos. Deep into their voyage, out of contact with their home, the crew has now come into contact with a distress beacon from Icarus I, the ship originally sent out seven years earlier on the very same mission. It disappeared without a trace. How? Why? In the shadow of the sun and with time running out the answers to these questions might not just be destructive, they could mean the annihilation of humanity’s last hope for survival.

The Sun approaches in Fox Searchilght's Sunshine

This is really all you need to know about director Danny Boyle’s (Trainspotting) latest motion picture Sunshine. This science fiction adventure, written by novelist and frequent Boyle screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later), is an esoteric and absorbing look into the unknown. It is, without question, one of the most cinematically pure journeys to come our way this year, and until it nearly goes off the rails in the third act the film is easily one of the finest works of edge-of-your-seat artistic achievement I’ve had the pleasure to see all year. 

The first two thirds are really something special. Like Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and The Fountain before it, this is a movie which uses the medium to near perfection. While the storyline and setup are relatively simple (Deep Impact and The Core come to mind immediately), it is the presentation that matters. Boyle and Garland delve into the complex metaphysical psychology of the situation, the multifarious strands of life, death, sacrifice, responsibility, religion and science played out to a operatic scale, all of it so absolutely absorbing I literally couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers don’t quite hold things together all the way through. Suddenly the film shifts gears into something more akin to Paul W.S. Anderson then to Stanley Kubrick, and while Boyle certainly knows how to handle a thriller the fact he didn’t have a better idea of what to do with all of this then to hand someone a knife is really quite disappointing. Sunshine could have been transcendent, a classic of the genre sure to be remembered for generations. While this could still of course happen (I can’t foresee the future) I seriously doubt it, and as brilliant as much of this I can’t help but find this fact something of a disappointment.

Still, I cannot begin to call this feature a waste of time or a missed opportunity. Moments here are so good they exhilarated my senses and forced my eyes to pop straight out of my head. There are a couple of brutally tense spacewalks which turned my intestines into cottage cheese because of the excruciatingly blissful tension, while the final coda is so emotionally magnetic I found myself moved to tears. The midsection is particularly outstanding, every shot, special effect, performance, edit and musical cue in such synchronistic harmony it’s almost magic.

The actors are all outstanding, Troy Garity (Soldier’s Girl), Cliff Curtis (Whale Rider), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later), Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai) and Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) particularly wonderful. But the shocking standout is Fantastic Four flamethrower Chris Evans. He’s so good as the Icarus II’s brash and energetic engineer I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Long after the film plays its final semi-cliché cards I still couldn’t get the guy or his performance out of my head, and now that I’m finally home and putting my thoughts to paper I admit I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next.

I’d be lying if I said I was completely satisfied. I wanted more from Boyle and Garland then the usual bag of tricks they stoop to reveling in, wished for a more sublime conclusion then what it is they ultimately came up with. But that doesn’t mean the film is a waste of time. In fact, I’d say just the opposite.  

So it isn’t quite lights out start to finish, but the film isn't a failure by any stretch of the imagination. It is a movie impossible to shake and even more difficult to forget, and if only for the fact it both made me think of all of life’s (and the universe’s) innumerable mysteries and kept me glued to the edge of my seat in gloriously frenzied anxiety I’d tell you to run out and see it without hesitation. That it does so with style, substance and entertainment value to spare makes doing so all the more easy proving that, even with a few minor flaws, this Sunshine is nothing short of a brightly shining star.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Sunshine Theatrical Trailer