[Reel-Reviews] Sunshine (3 stars)

Having been offered a preview ticket for this at the Cornerhouse, with a post-screening Q&A with Danny Boyle, Benedict Wong, and Dr Brian Cox, it would be churlish to pan Sunshine. In truth, there's not a lot to pan - it's generally a well-paced, philosophical, beautiful film, depicting the flight of a space crew to reignite the dying sun with a huge nuclear payload.

The film reflects on our reliance on and obsession with this tame but fiery beast, and for the majority of it, it's a slow-burn philosophical sci-fi that addresses a wide-variety of ethical and scientific issues, whilst borrowing from every other high-sci-fi of the last 30 years (2001, Alien, Solaris, etc).

Sadly in the third act, I felt that the plot fell prey a bit to an unnecessary twist - one that turned this into a thriller (even a slasher) rather than allowing us to complete the journey at the earlier, more-lesiurely-but-no-less-tense pace. Ah - and I could have done without the last scene but hey, I'll just mentally scrub it...

That aside, the soundtrack was stunning, and the visuals of the sun itself, gorgeous. It's had some very mixed reviews (panned on Newsnight Review, four-starred by the Observer, Guardian, Empire...) but go see the light (or dark?) for yourself.


IMDB listing and technorati tag: sunshine