Sunshine: When a good script goes bad.

Everyway "Sunshine"

Elvis Mitchell had a great phrase to describe much of Danny Boyle's work, when the two of them chatted on KCRW's The Treatment, that his films have a kind of "Ironic gloom" - just as the music from Manchester that Boyle often uses and listens to can be described as well. An ironic gloom. I like that.

Mitchell also correctly called out Boyle's latest, the sci-fi Sunshine, as being like a chamber piece, so attuned and in sync with music is the film, and all of Boyle's work.  There are times in Sunshine where it feels a bit too much like a moody Radiohead video, but overall there's no denying the film makes a striking visceral impact. Sunshine is set on a spaceship called Icarus 2 (the name itself is a very good, inside joke, as Icarus in Greek mythology was famous for falling to his death) that looks like a futuristic top, with the front part a giant dish that is meant to be cast adrift when the crew reaches a point near the sun - it's a bomb, basically, that is supposed to restart the dying star. The film features an international cast and looks terrific. It builds a sense of dread effectively until, like a dying sun itself, it flares out - making a few missteps near the end.  While the third act undeniably has several "What the...??" moments as it shifts a bit uneasily from tense sci-fi to a frightening horror, as the script throws us a few curveballs, everything before that works admirably.

About that third act - Don't read further if you care about the oddball twist -  The previous ship's captain, Pinbacker, presumed dead with the rest of his crew, who'd all been fried, appears as a stowaway on the Icarus 2. Given he looks like he'd been cross-bred with beef jerky (I highly recommend an SPF 4google sunblock the next time, Cap'n) and there's no plausible reason for him still being alive several years past the expiration date of his compadres on Icarus 1 other than the fact that he seems to have struck up a conversation with God and doesn't want the other mission to succeed. I mean, he *really* doesn't want it to succeed. It's understandable why Boyle and scriptwriter Alex Garland wanted to throw in a twist at the point they do; something had to fuck everything up worse as they get closer to their destination. And if you're going to go the stowaway character, there's a way to do it that doesn't involve him just trying to kill everyone. This wouldn't have been my choice.

As others have already written, the script has elements of Solaris, 2001, Event Horizon, The Black Hole and throw in some Armageddon for good measure. In many respects, though, it improves on each of those films with more nuanced characterizations and a truly remarkable look.  It's also more smartly scientifically believable - other than Beef Jerky Man -  making it all the more frightening as things unravel - and unravel they do, quickly and uncontrollably.  The science seems entirely plausible, even if some of it could be gobbledygook, it feels real. It's a science-fiction film for science nerds.

Still, we've seen much of this before - the captain who dies early to save everyone, the crew goes a bit bonkers and fight with each other, tough decisions have to be made, and so on. And if both visuals and intensity are Boyle strengths, emotional layering is not as much. But the cast is game, making us sympathetic for most of these characters to almost painful degrees. Cillian Murphy, not entirely within his element here in outer space, is nonetheless as empathetic as ever, and Rose Byrne also makes us root for her. She's particularly good in a tough scene where the crew most vote on whether another of them should live or die.

Despite its malfunctions, Sunshine''s one of the few smart, tense sci-fi films in recent years with a look both matter of fact and yet jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I want to forgive it for its missteps because so much of it held my attention - and the very, very ending is in fact suitably moving. It's only too bad they didn't sit back and rethink that third act one more time.

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[valeria iglesias]

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