Review of Sunshine (2007) by Spangle — 03 Mar 2015

Sunshine is a film that borrows heavily from the science fiction films that came before it, namely "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Solaris", and "Alien", but does not quite reach the heights of those films.

Instead of sticking with its science fiction premise, it opts to go all slasher movie and weird on us towards the end, which is ultimately what turned me off significantly from this one. Beginning with the positives, the world created here is super intriguing and very interesting.

You get the problem facing this crew and as things progress or regress on their journey, you feel excited or feel bad for them. That is very important for these types of films. In addition, the special effects are splendid and the acting from the entire, very large, cast is great.

Everybody did a superb job there. The direction from Danny Boyle is alright, nothing to write home about, but I do blame him a good bit for the way this one falls apart at the end. It is a movie about people traveling to the sun, so some suspension of disbelief is required, but the ending was far too much for me.

Without going off the deep end there and then using that weirdness to turn this one in a low-key slasher film, this one would have been way better. On top of that, the ending significantly dragged. The preceding, say, hour and 10 minutes were absolutely riveting and had you invested in the characters, while also forcing you to the edge of your seat on multiple occasions.

By the time that last half hour kicks in, you just want it to be over. However, I will say, the absolute end of this one saves the preceding half hour by being very moving and leaving the viewer on the brink of tears.

Thus, it saddens me even more that, towards the end, this one burned up in the sun or else it could have been far better. It had the pieces, but what it did with those pieces was not to my liking.