Sunshine (2007)

Brief: A team of astronauts and scientists (Cliff Curtis, Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Benedict Wong, Chris Evans, and Troy Garrity) are sent on a last hope mission to restart the dying sun.

No, really. There's not much more to the plot than that. I mean, I could run through what everyone does specifically, but I'm not sure about a couple of them.

To be honest, I didn't think I was going to bother with this movie, as the trailer I had repeatedly seen had nothing else in mind than making a crappy movie seem better than it was. That's hardly a ringing endorsement. Then the reviews came in, and they were mostly positive. Then someone said, "Might as well," and I thought, "Why not?" After all, I liked what Murphy, screenwriter Alex Garland, and director Danny Boyle did with zombies. And I don't even like horror movies.

While I did catch a few references to 2001, I was more tuned in to the refs to the Heroes eclipse/eye and the Flight of the Conchord's "Bowie's in Space." I'm not sure either one of those were intentional, and I especially doubt that Boyle, who wanted the golden spacesuits to be memorable, wanted me to start singing.

More than anything, though, this movie put me in mind of another deeply personal (partial) space epic: The Fountain. Rather than test the bounds of love and subsequent devotion as did Aronofsky, Boyle and Garland instead test the individual's fidelity to a cause. They set up a contrast between the crews of the Icarus I and II, pitting at first the desires of the individual against the salvation of humanity and slowly pared it down to an one-on-one showdown.

While Aronofsky used his triptych to bind together a bewitching, if befuddling, love story that spanned the ages, Boyle and Garland tell their story straight, giving ample time to their supporting characters (particularly to a well tuned performance by Evans). Even so, Murphy's Capa is the only character whose motivations, dreams, and personal life get any real attention. It's on the strength of his performance and character development that this movie succeeds.

You know, I felt like I knew what I was getting myself into when I walked into the theatre. For the most part, I was right. But even with the easy to read plot, this movie still had a few surprises. Good for it. B