Sunshine

When I was in college, I worked for about a year and a half at a laserdisc rental store. The job was great, more or less so because rarely ever did anyone ever come in. The more I reflect on it the more I come to think that it was some sort of front for laundering money to South America. There is no way the owner of the store could have been making any money yet it was open day after day... I would work 5-6 hours, take my pay in cash, and usually go home with 3-4 movies to watch that night. Since I was studying film at UM at the time, it was the perfect job for me.

One of the movies I fell in love with was a small British thriller called Shallow Grave. I must have taken the movie home 20 times and soaked up every Hitchkockian element in the film. It was the first of a few movies a trio of very talented Brits would make - Danny Boyle (Director), Alex Garland (writer) and Andrew MacDonald (producer) would go on to make the astounding Trainspotting - of which I have only one major complaint, the London tourist bureau's seemingly out of left field montage sequence that was just so out of place in this wild ride of a movie. In 2002 the trio would reinvent the tired Zombie genre in a huge way with 28 Days Later, which after a rousing first hour, unfortunately fell apart at the end, but still kept me on the edge of my seat and has become a favorite of mine.

So it was with anticipation that I learned of the trio's newest film, Sunshine, a sci-fi epic about humanity's last ditch effort to save our dying sun. I went to see a sneak preview of the film on Monday night, and leaving the theater, I felt like I had just seen two movies, one a stylish foray into the sci-fi genre that could have been great, the other a very standard Nightmare on Elm Street slasher yarn that had me shaking my head and asking why?

Basically the story goes, 8 astronauts are on a 16 month mission to launch a bomb into the heart of our dying sun, which will hopefully give it the kick start it needs. After a series of "really bad decisions" are made by the crew - not a knock, as that's how some of the best sci-fi films get started (Alien being the one that best comes to mind) - the crew finds themselves in a spot of the worst kind - not enough oxygen to get home, let alone make it to the point where they can fulsill their duty and possibly save the human race.

Somewhere along the way though, this film decends into the aforementioned slasher film, with really no rhyme or reason other than to throw the viewer for some kind of loop... Wholly unnecessary, as the film has enough legs to stand on its own as a solid sci-fi film that could have come to a solid resolution.

Regardless, I enjoyed Sunshine... the effects were pretty intense, the music was quite appropriate (one thing Boyle and Co. know how to do is tie in the music to their films... I was reminded of the incredible soundtrack to 28 Days Later quite often during the movie) and the performances were alright. I've been a fan of Cillian Murphy since 28 Days and hope he continues to work with Boyle. I'm still hoping Boyle, MacDonald and Garland hit the mark with their next film - I have no doubts they can work in any genre and look forward to seeing their next effort.

My Pitchfork review - 6.3 / 10