A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Sunshine

Date Viewed: 7/22/07

Details:

Cliff Curtis

Cillian Murphy

Michelle Yeoh

Hiroyuki Sanada

Rose Byrne

Benedict Wong

Chris Evans

Director: Danny Boyle

Score: 0

The Review: This reminds me too much of Solaris -- all three Solarises (Solari?), in fact, including Stanislaw Lem's novel and both film versions -- and that's not good.

It's the indefinite, but not all that far distant, future. Our Sun is dying; Earth is slowly freezing. Two expeditions are mounted to save the Sun; the first fails off-screen, and we are lurking behind the shoulders of the second. As a hook, the premise is not all that bad; and we can suspend disbelief when we find that the solution to the problem is to inject some magic explosive into the outer heliosphere. But the science is mere window dressing for a "people against the universe" tragedy. In scaffolding and intent, this is essentially a closed room mystery with a thriller overlay -- it's not action-less -- with a cast of more-or-less anonymous faces (Yeoh is the only familiar one in the bunch). The technology behind the ship is curious, visually stunning and not unreasonable -- although gravity seems to be substantially more pliant that normal -- but this is definitely not science fiction that clanks. Sunshine is people, and of little interest for all that. It didn't grip me.

The SFX are good enough to watch this in the theatre, but not enough to carry the film. And I must complain about the brightness and intensity of the lighting in some scenes -- yes, of course, it makes sense to portend just how close to the Sun they are. But I'm just in the audience, and don't need to be vaporized to ash.

(10-Sep-07)

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