Film Review – Sunshine
Title: Sunshine
Director: Danny Boyle
Year: 2007
Genre: Sci-fi
Format Reviewed: Bluray
Here comes another film from Danny Boyle, who you may know from 28 Days Later, or even earlier, Trainspotting. Sunshine is an instant classic in both the natural apocalypse and sci-fi genre in general. Quite simply, it’s Armageddon taken much more seriously, better acting, a thousand times more suspense, and a dose of 2001: A Space Odyssey surreality. Not to mention awesome special effects, which are deliver very well through the visuals and full bitrate DTS from the bluray.
So what’s so great about it? Well, first off… there hasn’t been a really, really good sci-fi like this since I-don’t-know-when. I guess since Jurassic Park, but that wasn’t quite the “spacey” sci-fi that Sunshine is. The story is believable enough (because it’s true… just about 5 billion years off of reality), and just by watching the film by itself, I didn’t really find the unrealistic things that fills many other critics’ review of the film. If you know what sci-fi is… that is fiction… then you shouldn’t have a problem giving up some science holes for this all to pull together in the end.
One surprising thing, literally, was the amount of suspense in Sunshine, both surreal psychologically and fight-or-flight style, anxious horror suspense. In fact, watching this one alone in a dark room was almost too much. It freaked me out more than even some of the best horror films. The characters are a little “American” in that they have some ego problems, but this is actually quite believable in context. Astronauts that have been stuck in the same vessel for months on end. It probably would get to the average person.
To its merit or demerit, depending on your psychological state, the movie can be quite depressing. There are many times where the crew must choose to go on a safer path with less chance of success in their mission, or to risk lives (or definite loss of) in order to have a little more chance of success. Someone has to draw the short straw. And what if you are the one… who now has to come to the understanding of your death? Who can be ready for that? In any case, one soon learns that the mission is heading for disaster and the crew must fight on to succeed and save the world on their last chance. This gives the viewer something to root for, and a satisfying goal to be achieved. In this way, the film leads you on a journey of inevitable, without leaving out the very real and challenging decisions of life. There is something to be learned about humanity in its endeavors that are both caused and saved by itself.
Rating: 5 /5
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