Review of Sunshine (2007) by Meritcoba — 20 Nov 2015

(I have introduced my own voting system. A 1 for bleh, a 5 for meh and a 9 for wow, leaving a 0 for the odd ones out and a 10 for freaking awesome.This one gets a meh, with a star for the first half of the movie).

To be foretold is to be forewarned I guess, and thus, having read some reviews and seen some clips on youtube, I found myself unable to watch the last part of this movie. It is the part where the story starts to slide downhill. This feature is a rocket blasting into space with a magnificent breathtaking fiery halo, just to falter halfway up, sizzle out and flap to the ground.

The beginning dishes you with amazing scenes of the sun in its death throes , the scorched surface of mercury and the peaceful quietness of space. The story is slow to develop and it has the feel of 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially in the way the voice of the computer talks.

The actors are fine. The acting is fine. The music is great. The camera handling is okay. The story might have a lame premise(really, kick-starting the sun with a bomb as if it is and engine that just needs the twist of a key to get going again?) but they do not dwell too much on it and seem to focus more on the interaction between the nine people that form the crew on their sixteen month voyage. It works until it gets all undone at the end.. It is like someone writes a story and then when you turn the next page it ends saying: and then they all died.

Obvious this is not one movie, but a movie made from two parts of two movies with two scripts. The first is from a science fiction movie and the second from a lame horror story. The writer probably couldn't think of a way to wrap up the story in a profound or spectacular manner and therefore went for the jugular with cheap shocks. And misses the mark profoundly.

I can understand the plight of the script writer who has a great idea, creates a fine setup, writes some good dialog, but ultimately bungles the end. It is just terrible hard work to write a nice story apparently. I struggle with it myself, not that I presume to be a writer of any expertise, but I like to write stories or rather I like to write scenes. But scenes need to be connected and be part of a process that has a start and a finish and an in between part that makes the one connect with the other in a fluent way. This movie has a lot going for it, but ultimately doesn't make that connection and therefore fails as a story. A pity really.