Sunshine

2007 • 107 minutes

About this movie

In the year 2057, Earth's last hope lies with a spacecraft whose mission is to deliver a nuclear device designed to reignite our fading sun.

Ratings and reviews

I truthfully wanted to like this film. The concept was interesting and the production values were beautiful, with an incredibly impressive cast. Unfortunately the characters consistently made frustratingly scripted decisions, ignoring clear alternatives and performing actions that made no sense except to further plot, before quickly turning into a glorified remake of Event Horizon. The atheist vs. theist analogy was very heavy handed, but at the same time incredibly shallow. Extremely disappointing.

Sending a crew of astronauts with a giant nuke to reignite the sun? Sure, whatever. I don't mind suspending my disbelief for 2 hours in the name of good entertainment. I can even get over all the dated SciFi cliches - The communication breakdown with earth, the rendezvous with the mysteriously disappeared earlier ship, the psychological pressure between the crew members. The visuals are very appealing. Boyle heavily borrows from films such as 2001, and the imagery is gorgeous. But unfortunately it's not enough to save the film from its dopey, boring plot. The crew constantly bumbles around, stumbling form one disaster to the next and making one stupid decision after the other for no reason other than to move the plot forward. [SPOILER WARNING] By the time the captain of the previous mission re-emerges as some sort of religious zombie ghost with a severe sunburn, I was praying for humanity to already get wiped out, so I could stop watching this nonsense.

This movie was good on the special effects and story setup. I thought all the problems the crew was facing and ran into was actually believable. But the unexpected fifth crew member at the end just completely ruined the whole thing. *And* John Murphy's outstanding score - "Sunshine Adagio In D Minor", was just over used and lost it's effectiveness at a completely and unnecessary horrible location on the movie at the second time around. Overall quite a disappointment.