The third act really flames out.
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How much do you penalize an otherwise interesting film for a slightly cheesy opening and a botched third act?
That's the problem with reviewing Danny Boyle's "Sunshine." If I had another two weeks to just let this one simmer in the back of my mind, I might be better able to say whether what sticks with me are the gaffs or the sometimes mesmerizing "2001"-style visuals and space tension.
After a clumsy opening that has one of the astronauts talking to Icarus (the computer that runs their Icarus II spacecraft) as if she were Hal, and another sequence that seems just as dully copycat, the film settles into a pretty decent sci-fi thriller. The year is 2057. Icarus I was lost in space, and now it's up to the crew of Icarus II to deliver a massive nuclear payload to the sun to explode it and ignite a new star. Hanging in the balance is Earth, which is in near-darkness now because of the waning sun. It's a wonderful sci-fi premise, and one that reinforces the whole idea of what would happen if we lost some of the natural resources that we now take for granted.
There are eight astronauts who have various areas of expertise, but one of the most interesting things that Alex Garland does with his script is to decentralize the point-of-view. Rather than seeing everything through the eyes of a single character--which we first suspect in the beginning, as one of the astronauts narrates in voiceover--the point-of-view shifts several times. And the captain of the mission? He's relegated to having no more importance than any of the other crew members, largely because of these point-of-view decisions. It makes their tense and probably suicidal voyage to save the planet less heroic/martyred and all the more believable.
But a problem that results from the shifting points of view is that we never really get as emotionally involved with the characters as we did with, say, the "Apollo 13" crew. They feel as almost as one-dimensional as the characters who too often populate slasher films or action flicks. Then again, they're types: Cillian Murphy (who most successfully elevates his character) plays the physicist, Benedict Wong is the navigator, Michelle Yeoh is the biologist, Rose Byrne the pilot, Cliff Curtis the doctor, Chris Evans the engineer, Hiroyuki Sanada is the captain, and Troy Garity plays the mission's coward.
Still, Alwin Küchler's cinematography and a believable stranded-in-space tension are enough to make this film worthwhile, especially as things start to "heat up." There was plenty of interest without Garland and Boyle having to launch this thing into another solar system. The biggest (and most jarringly offensive) problem is that "Sunshine" begins like "2001: A Space Odyssey," takes a turn into "The Abyss" where they have to make some tough survival decisions, and ends up like any other cheap slasher film. Icarus and Freddie Krueger? I know I won't be the only one who thinks that if Danny Boyle & Co. had stuck with sci-fi and left the horror for another movie, this would have been a better film. It was a solid 7 before it veered off track like that. I can appreciate the blending of genres as much as anyone, but if you're going to do that you can't wait until the last act. As is, it's like watching "Apollo 13," then learning near the end that one of the crew is a flesh-eating zombie or something like that, and the rest had better scatter. Come on!
Video:
The 1080p picture looks very good, with an MPEG-4 transfer and 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Some of the scenes that have bright light tend to be grainy and also have a little "noise" flutter to them, while at other times the film just doesn't seem to have the sharpness it does in other frames. The best sequences are the close-ups and high-contrast shots, where you can see sufficient black levels at work and decent color saturation, with plenty of detail, even on the edges. Overall, though, it's a strong HD picture.
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[release]22533[/release]