SUNSHINE (2007) *

Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is like Solaris and Alien minus the cinematic flair of Solaris or the alien of Alien.  It does have the glacial pacing of Solaris, though.  Unfortunately that’s all it’s got.

The sun is dying.  The spaceship, Icarus I went up to restart the sun and failed.  So the crew of Icarus II follows in their footsteps to complete the job.

They also waste a good cast in the process.  Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Cliff Curtis are given virtually nothing worthwhile to do.  Of the cast, Evans comes off as the most likeable (I liked the scene where he is forced to apologize to Murphy), but everyone else pretty much blends in with the futuristic wallpaper.

Sunshine has a slow burn type of build-up.  As their flight goes on, the crew deals with one mishap or another.  Fire, lack of oxygen, and a crew member going mental are all perils they wind up facing.  None of them are particularly involving or scary.

Boyle’s pacing is painful.  Even though the fate of the Earth is on the line, it all seems rather dull and boring.  There’s no real drive here and the whole thing just feels inert and uninteresting. 

At times Sunshine feels like a Syfy Movie with better actors.  Boyle handles what action there is in such an indifferent manner that it’s hard to be engaged.  The characters are so flatly written that it’s hard to care about them or their many perils. 

Things get odd in the last act when the movie ditches the whole slow, thoughtful approach for a straight-up horror film angle.  It’s here where a crazed, naked crew member goes nuts and starts slashing people up.  This idea might’ve worked if it was played out throughout the flick.  Having it tacked on in the last half hour just makes it feel like it came out of an entirely different picture.  The blurry, quick-cutting editing of the killer’s actions is also quite headache-inducing.

Basically, two hours of darkness would’ve been preferable to 107 minutes of Sunshine.