Sunshine

In the not-too-distant-future, the sun is about to peter out. A crew is sent to re-ignite it with a nuclear bomb; when they fail, a new team is sent to finish the job (seven years later). But they find that flying to the least hospitable place in our solar system and staying alive is no supersymmetric matter.

Although Sunshine is not on my list of 2007 potential blockbusters, this proved to be a dark horse in the realm of sleeper sci-fi thrillers. While most deep-space films aspire to create a fear of the vacuous dark, Sunshine will leave you afraid the sun.

Helmer, Danny (28 Days Later) Boyle, proves again that there is no film genre that he can't successfully tackle. His venture into the claustrophobia of spaceship living, aggressively hissing pistons, bellowing alert signals, and clanging corridors stretching darkly into certain doom, certainly resembles any number of iconoclastic space odysseys from the past. But this rendition veers from the archetypal patterns we've seen before of monsters hiding in cupboards, or indeed the dark - this time Boyle cleverly employs the provider of all life as our ultimate enemy - the sun.

Boyle casts an ensemble of recognizable, albeit modestly famous faces, that you'll recall with familiarity - Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai), Chris Evans (FF's, the Human Torch), Rose Byrne (the girl who beds Achilles in Troy), and Cillian Murphy (starry-eyed survivor from 28 Days Later) - but that suggest any one of them could kick off as soon as the mission goes pear-shaped. As they swiftly and spectacularly do.

Disaster ensues when the crew realizes that the ship they were sent to replace hasn't disappeared at all, but is simply bathing in the rays of the sun. And despite the fact that this kind of heroism almost never ends well in sci-fi movies, they set off to rescue, or at the very least, salvage it. The ensuing madness yields world-class, white-knuckle cinematic brilliance, and also reveals that there is nothing new under the proverbial (sci-fi) sun.

If the fast-paced action of the film ever gave you time to examine similarities to sci-fi movies past (which it categorically does not), you might find yourself thinking, "Ooh, that's sort of like Alien"/"I remember that from 2001"/"Man, that seems a lot like Event Horizon"/"Gadzooks, there's even a nod to Dr. Strangelove" (if your particularly pretentious). There's the noble captain willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good; the cowardly, unqualified second-in-command; a bit where the airlock malfunctions; lots of violently flashing lights, and an onboard computer that sounds like a patient but unhelpful self-help tape. None of these should spoil the overall enjoyment of the film, but it does beg the question, "Has the narrow genre of People Go Mad in Space reached its creative critical mass?"

Of course, you'll only have the opportunity to weigh such considerations after the credits begin rolling, because Boyle is far too busy wringing you dry of perspiration before that. I have long stated, based on my limited ability to assess such things, that developing a compelling conclusion is the toughest thing to do in film making. Sadly, this is somewhat true with this film as well. As the tension escalates and the bodycount rises, it appears that we're well on our way to a genre classic, but in spite of the intense build up, the finale leaves a bit of an enigmatic taste in your mouth (perhaps intentionally). The result is that an otherwise gripping film closes with a bit of a fizzle rather than an explosive sunburst.

McRating: 8.5