Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007): UK/USA

Reviewed by Anna Bewe. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Many friends have said good things about Sunshine, so I decided to go and see this film at the festival. The film is science fiction, about a crew who must save the dying sun. Sounds like a good, thrilling concept, but I was totally wrong – it wasn’t much to see.

Sunshine takes place the year 2057 and the sun is dying. The only way to save it (and us) is to send a big bomb out in the space that can restore the balance in the sun. But the problem is the time, the sun is dying fast and the last expedition that was sent in to space was destroyed. The last hope lies at Icarus II and its crew of 8 people. They must overcome all the problems that arises – the mission must be completed, to any cost. Cillian Murphy is starring Robert Capa, a young brilliant physicist who is responsible for the gigantic bomb that will hopefully save the sun, he is also the one who take the decision to deviate from the predetermined course to examine a mystic signal which is coming from the backside of Mercury. A miss judgement is made and the space ship is damaged. The crew at Icarus II gets involved in a deadly battle to achieve the mission.

When I came to the cinema to watch this film, I was expecting a really good film from the director Danny Boyle, as I really liked Trainspotting and The Beach. These expectations started slowly to vanish more and more when I watched this film. The pace is pretty slow even if there were fast jumps in time. One of the reasons why I think this film is slow, hasn’t anything to do with how well made the shoots are, but because nothing of what happens in the film is engaging, I didn’t felt much for anyone in the film, and the conflicts is just analytical games, and not human conflicts. The positive side in this film was the beautiful pictures, but without any meaning – it just because a delusion that gets boring to watch.