Review of Sunshine (2007) by Dan W — 20 Aug 2016

With an interesting concept and a talented director, Sunshine sounded like an innovative science fiction story.

Sunshine immediately thrusts the story to a point in the mission where the characters are already within the orbit of Mercury and thus a short distance from the sun. This gives us no contextualization to the current situation on earth, the nature behind starting the mission or just what the mission meant to anybody on a personal level. We are given nothing to lead us into the story, we are just thrown the middle of it without consideration. The pace of the film moves along steadily enough to allow audiences to adjust without confusion, but we aren't necessarily given much of a reason to care about the characters in the film aside from general obligation.

Sunshine boasts a story about a collection of astronauts and scientists on a journey to the sun to reignite it and save planet earth in the process, but along the way everybody manages to forget about this and jeer the narrative off into a completely different path. The majority of the focus in Sunshine is simply on the main characters struggling to survive due to the fault of human error in their space journey, and it soon becomes an experiment to see how many ways writer Alex Garland can come up with for killing off his characters. The story in Sunshine is clearly inspired by a multitude of science fiction classics, borrowing from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris (1972) and Alien (1979). Oddly enough a film that cites these three features as key influences was already directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. I refer to the science fiction horror film Event Horizon (1997), an imperfect yet seriously underrated box office bomb which has since earned the status of being a cult classic. Much like Sunshine, Event Horizon proves to bring itself into contact with slasher film conventions. But since everybody is aware that it is a horror film there is nothing in disguise. Sunshine insists on falling into the same narrative path yet pretending that it is something more. Sunshine does have the credibility of using themes from Armageddon (1998), Silent Running (1971) and Dark Star (1974) to elicit nostalgia, but these are arbitrary points to the story which offer it nothing in the long run. Sunshine aims for more emotional heft while Event Horizon was of a far more exploitation nature as it opted more for commercial gimmicks. But when it comes down to it, both films follow plotlines too similar to disregard. And against all expectations, I must say that Event Horizon triumphs as a superior film simply because it isn't as pretentious as Sunshine. In essence Sunshine is little more than a slasher film set in outer space where the killer is constantly changing, and any attempt it makes to pretend it is something else proves to just pile on a surplus of one-dimensional characters and arbitrary plot points which make no direct contribution to the story path.

Sunshine seems to be convinced that its display of the mysteries of space and science are a subject of intellectual marvel, but in actuality they are just used as devices to kill off the characters. This renders much of the imagery pointless in the lasting value of the narrative, ensuring that the film stays one-dimensional. It's really a shame because Sunshine managed to wring some truly impressive production values out of its relatively small budget of $40 million thanks to skilful production design, costumes and visual effects. Of course the highlight of the film's technical achievements is the magnificent musical score which captures the large scale of the journey and the sentimentality of the emotional intensity. During the climax of the story, the musical score is captivating in truly the finest sense of the word. Danny Boyle proves to maintain his sense of imagery even in the face of an ineffective screenplay.

Also, the diverse nature of the cast really lends the film a realistic ear of credibility and provides roles to people of various races outside of the conventional Hollywood sphere. It's just a shame that there are really no characters supplied to back them up as there are countless characters and little who are memorable. Everyone offers some kind of one-dimensional story of their own which doesn't go anywhere and essentially proves to be a tedious distraction from the central narrative. So as a means of establishing any favourites, it's really a matter of personal preference for cast members. In my case I liked Cliff Curtis the most because he spoke with a very eloquent sophistication. He explains the scientific language of the film at a steady and coherent pace without resorting to a condescending extent of layman's terms, and he does it with a truly genuine nature to him which adds a sense of humanity to his presence. He's smart but he takes a simple path not to complicate things, keeping him likable. Cliff Curtis has always been an actor I've respected, and so I'm happy to see him working in mainstream American cinema where he really gets a chance to display his talents to a wide audience.

Rose Byrne also contributes a strong effort as she is seemingly the most emotionally involved of all the cast members, keeping in a heightened state of intensity which plays out in both her line delivery and her physical movements. Benedict Wong similarly stands out predominantly because of the raw human emotion he displays when delivering a really intense monologue close to the start of the film. He comes off as being a very genuine human being on the basis of this scene.

Cillian Murphy is also effective and Mark Strong is an easily convincing villain. Chris Evans is also a welcome presence in his pre-Avengers career.

Sunshine has a talented cast and a strong sense of style, making it all the more disappointing when the narrative fails to capitalize on its concept and falls into a path of slasher film conventions and recycled plot points from superior science fiction films.