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91A bare outline of the plot reads like a space-adventure thriller with end-of-the-world stakes and a hint of celestial spirituality, and the haunted spaceship twist in the third act is pure B-movie madness.
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88Sunshine is near-classic modern science fiction, hobbled only by a chaotic final reel and some casting missteps in the white-male department.
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88If their movie doesn't float your boat as a work of science-fiction, action, philosophy, heliocentrism, or staggering visual spectacle (although, it really should), then it certainly succeeds as a parable for cinematic ambition.
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83Another thinking-person's thriller from director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, also co-pilots on "28 Days Later."
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80Sunshine is its own creature, taking inspiration from classic science fiction films but insisting on a gritty reality that much improves on past space adventures.
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80A first-rate, seemingly sweat-free entertainer, Mr. Boyle always sells the goods smoothly, along with the chills, the laughs and, somewhat less often, the tears. He's wickedly good at making you jump and squirm in your seat, which he does often in Sunshine, but he tends to avoid tapping into deep wells of emotion.
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80In moments--the early moments--Sunshine can feel like a new genre classic, albeit one heavily in debt to its predecessors.
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80Beam yourselves aboard Sunshine, set 50 years in the future. The voyage works, beautifully.
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75Science-fiction fans will like it, and also brainiacs, and those who sometimes look at the sky and think, man, there's a lot going on up there, and we can't even define precisely what a soliton is.
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75Despite the efforts of the cast (Byrne and Murphy are particularly good), you rarely feel a thing for any of them, but I don't think you're really supposed to, anyway. The characters in Sunshine tackle thorny ethical questions and debate the sanctity of life on their way to the sun, but the movie is really about the voyage, not the voyagers. Enjoy the sights.
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75What this spectacular-looking sci-fi thriller lacks in originality it makes up for in pure beauty: It just might be the most visually audacious and startlingly beautiful space opera since the original "Solaris."
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75Hard-core science fiction fans will likely greet Sunshine with a smile. Others may find this to be an odd motion picture, but there's enough going on that even those who are expecting something flashier should still be engaged.
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75The fact that Boyle and Garland have here created something close to an actual trip rather than the mere spectacle that most screen sci-fi contents itself with being nowadays is enough to recommend Sunshine.
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75This sci-fi thriller -- which is alternately nail-biting, gorgeous and a little silly -- spends most of its time throwing mechanical and human errors at the most important space mission ever.
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75As a pure cinematic experience, it's exhilaratingly, brutally beautiful.
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70They've taken "2001" and Tarkovsky's "Solaris" and "Silent Running," mixed in stuff from save-the-earth pictures like "The Core" and "Deep Impact," and thrown in a cheesy climax out of "Alien."
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70The most indelible moment I took away from Sunshine, in which a tiny figure in a golden space suit floats away from the ship into the gravitational pull of the sun, is one of ecstatic, appalling loneliness.
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70For though it can't maintain its momentum all the way to the end, Sunshine until it stumbles is gratifyingly far from the usual space-opera stuff.
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70Sunshine does for sci-fi what "28 Days Later" . . . did for the zombie movie -- its tale about a manned space mission to the sun preys on our growing fear of obliteration as we confront global warming.
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67Too much of Sunshine is like a cross between a middling "Alien" movie and "Solaris" (the woozy Steven Soderbergh version).
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63The whole thing burns out well before the director reaches his final destination.
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63So what starts out as fascinating sci-fi becomes just fi, and winds up pulp fi.
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63Sunshine can be seen as a story about science and religion, about the rational mind and the mad. But at a certain point, like a dying star about to pop into eternal nothingness, the movie can't be seen as anything - it just implodes.
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63As the film ultimately deviates from its course, the entire undertaking suffers.
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63That last wrong turn completely undoes a picture that had been steering a very impressive course.
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60Danny Boyle still creates an impressive world, visually rich and yet cold and claustrophobic.
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Ideas scintillate over the surface of Sunshine without ever quite igniting, but at least the movie sparkles. What it doesn't do is cohere. Action flick, sci-fi thriller, metaphysical adventure, incoherent allegory, ethical hypothesis, and horror film all at once, this mad multitasker has the agenda of a dozen movies. Problem is, we know which ones.
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60Like a collapsing star, Sunshine initially burns brightly but finally implodes into a dramatic black hole.
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58It's one big miss.
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50Problems arise in the film's third act, however, with a profoundly implausible plot turn that sends the movie skidding into bogeyman horror. It cheapens the sentiment, and the film doesn't recover.
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50One of those unapologetically cerebral space-exploration sci-fi movies that's both boring and compelling at once.
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The characters are so sketchily drawn that it's hard to keep them straight, let alone get worked up about their survival.
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50The film is nonsense, and what counts is whether viewers will feel able to lay aside their logical complaints and bask in what remains: a trip in search of a tan.
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0Directed by Danny Boyle, it lacks even a single moment of charm or interest.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 78 out of 97
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Mixed: 7 out of 97
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Negative: 12 out of 97
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10
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SilvioJ.10Amazing movie from start to finish. Most people missed this masterpiece, I'm telling everyone I know.