::READERS REVIEWS::

Interesting at first, then completely falls apart for the last 45 min. - Great soundtrack and sound effects. Ultra-clear blu ray quality. The first 2/3 of the movie are interesting and create a good sense of dread, but the last 1/3 of the movie seems to have been spliced in from some random 80's horror flick and it completely ruins the movie. I would rent it at most. Not a buy.

Amazing Film Despite the Third Act - The cast does an incredible job in this movie. Chris Evans especially is really good, and I was very happy to see Hiroyuki Sanada in this. Only thing that bugs me a little is the third act. *spoiler* They set up how Pinbacker could've survived, but the way he's filmed and the things he endures (100% full sunlight on one part) make him almost supernatural. *end spoiler* They didn't need that. It was compelling enough without it, and it seems contrary to the realistic atmosphere they were going for, but as a whole, I still love the film. The story is intense and the pacing is tight. Having eight astronauts strapped to the back of a bomb is the perfect scenario for tension especially when you factor in human error. I wish Boyle would've done Alien Resurrection.

The DVD is loaded with special features. The commentaries alone are worth listening to (the physicist one is incredibly interesting), but you also get very detailed production diaries. So despite the bad cover art (check out the Hong Kong release for what it should have been), this is definitely one you should own.

I've got a real problem with this movie... - So, (spoiler alert) the sun is going out and the people on the spaceship are going to restart it and save the earth. They have a lot of challenges to overcome like in any movie, and then they overcome them. But here's the thing about the movie that you won't believe: no one ever looks really serious and says "It's daylight saving time."

Not one character. No one says "It's daylight saving time." In the entire movie. I know you don't think it's possible, but if you watch it you'll feel like you wasted 4 hours of your life (time moves slower when you're waiting for someone to deliver an amazing line). What were the writers thinking!?

Captivated, yet bored...strange - I completely understand why people would hate this film. The final act is such a violent swerve in pace and story, a bad misdirection, that it detracts from the whole.

However, the subduing soundtrack, mixed with some vibrant, beautiful, directing techniques had me transfixed.

The story is of the dysfunctional crew of the Pegasus. A deepspace craft whose sole purpose is to reignite our dying star. Much like Pacino's 'Insomnia' there is a strong sense of days, weeks and months bluring into one long day. The editing and direction conveys the lulling, tired and taught crew's emotions with vivid perfection.

I found a wonderful beat to the action, which is slow, akin to 2001 Space Oyssey. But the majesty of the voyage, the Pegasus, and the relationships of the fraught crew is very gripping.

It's a shame Boyle didn't have a great ending, as what he came up with feels a little like he had a great concept but couldn't fulfil the final act. That's probably a little unfair as it does fit well with the theme of finding and becoming God, the giver of life. Still, the Zombie-esque finale doesn't quite fit.

It's not a film for most, perobably a sunday afternoon film to snooze to in most cases, but I liked it.

Space is Man's final conquest. The nature of our species is to explore and discover. It's what drives us to evolve. Our Solar system is so close, yet so far from our grasp, and anything that brings me closer to it excites my senses.

Over and under baked - The camera angles, framing (how close we are to the subjects), editing and composition of the internal shots are way, way over done. I felt like I was watching someone parodying a Paul Greengrass film (as if such awfulness like the Bourne sequels isn't bad enough strait-up) while borrowing further stylistic aesthetics from better director's like Michael Winterbottom. Shot after shot is partially obscured, dutched, lens flared, and/or is too close... and scenes continue for the most part with more subsequent shots that are just random variations on these ones they began with. We rarely have a sense of geography outside of what we can piece together like some kind of puzzle. The cinematography and editing just call attention to themselves in Sunshine without lending emotional substance. It does not aid plot development. It does not "paint" our emotional response uniquely. Just gimmick. Again, I'm not talking about the effects or the externals, though one could make the case of the latter being neglected further by insufficient geographic lucidity. I'll give a pass on that due to it succeeding in revealing the grandness of the ship's structure over successive, disparate scenes.

Even more problematic is the lack of character development by showing strengths, weaknesses, insecurities, and joys. We just kind of get thrown into this motley crew without being given any reason to care about them. Sure, Earth is in trouble but considering it's in the future and we don't know what they're like back home, for all I know it's now just a planet of texting automatons not worthy of saving. For that matter, this crew itself lacks maturity, professionalism, and many other attributes you find in pilots, astronauts, and accomplished scientists. They whine & stress about dying, and argue like a bunch of junior high girls. Before we know it, there's the formulaic plot devices reminiscent of Mission to Mars or Deep Core where one technical problem after another needs to be overcome in sequence as the characters are lost to attrition until only the final few remain. This is fulfilled by such absurdities like airlocks needing to be manually triggered from within, even though there's a guy in a space suite that could stay behind so someone doesn't actually need to be left behind to die. These are contrivances that such a weak script relies upon to propel us to further heights of suspense, and then finally an ending.

I was hoping the smart story concept and painstaking effects would be matched with the substance at some point in the film to justify them. Some patience. Some interesting interpersonal dialogue. Some genuine teamwork, compassion, and illustration of their acquired skills. I felt no emotional investment. Striking visuals and some droney, heavily-reverbed emo music can't fill in those gaps. Turning up a knob that actually says "resonance" can't be such a crutch. It could have augmented a better film, so I waited and watched. Unfortunately, Sunshine takes a turn for the highly predictable, which I suppose Boyle tried to remedy by further gee-wiz obscuring post-production effects to make it more cryptic and interesting. Well, it's certainly visually cryptic to a point, even perhaps welcome in making the gore more palatable, but the look on my face was probably one more of disappointment and amazement that *this* is what a Danny Boyle sci-fi outing turned out as. I am admittedly shocked at how much I disliked this film. My friends would ordinarily assume this would be right up my alley. I loved Trainspotting. I enjoy science fiction. The cast was alright. Perhaps it didn't get the critical acclaim it didn't deserve and that's why I didn't hear about it until now...?

So disappointed - ***spoiler****


I don't think I've ever written a review on a movie before on Amazon, but I just have to vent. This movie is so incredibly amazing until the last 25 minutes. Maybe a top 5 fave for me until they completely ruin the atmosphere, drama and story about people sacrificing for the greater good. How do they do this? By inexplicably going supernatural with the leader of the previous ship sent on the mission becoming some sort of sun burnt sun god or some crap. What a joke. WHY!!! Why do this??? Couldn't he have still been himself, just warped in the mind? Why make him a supernatural creature of some sort. I have nothing more to say really, other than I feel so let down by such an incredible first few acts.

Definitely the most letdown I've ever been during the course of viewing a movie.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun - What a marvellous, but flawed, piece of cinema. Flawed in a good way, like a flawed hero: flawed in a way that makes it all the more necessary to see.

Sunshine, like the name of the spaceship it centres around ("Icarus II" - it being number II is just inspired - implication: haven't you learned your lesson?) has large elements of Greek tragedy and human hubris: it is probably no accident that the premise of the film is quite preposterous: that a small band of humans are sent to kick-start the dying sun by firing a nuclear device "the size of Manhattan" at it. No matter that the sun, itself really just a giant nuclear reactor, is billions of times the size of Manhattan - a point repeatedly made by Danny Boyle in establishing shots of the spaceship, and the planet mercury, dwarfed by the colossal inferno that the crew are flying towards.

Boyle's cinematography is exquisite: there are number of timeless set pieces which convey utterly the forlorn weediness of homo sapiens in the face of the almighty grandeur of the cosmos. Elsewhere the screen rendering is inventive and at all times eloquent and elegant. There is some amusing implausibility embedded (and not just the film's very premise: for example: gravity seems to come and go with air pressure), but none which can't be happily thrown into the suspended disbelief bucket for a couple of hours. This is a very thoughtful and stylishly composed film, and one that would render far more impressively on a cimema screen than at home on a television (which, alas, is where I saw it). The music is intelligent, too, with reminiscence of Brian Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks.

That's not to say it is massively coherent: perhaps by deliberate intent, Boyle poses big questions but is less interested in answering them. This is a time-honoured tradition in "intelligent science fiction" of course - some would say it's a characteristic of the very best films in the genre (for example Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both of which Sunshine resembles in significant ways).

That said, and for all its visceral beauty, in Sunshine it is often difficult to make out exactly what is going on, or why. Icarus II experiences malfunctions which necessitate two astronauts taking a space walk to assess and repair damage: it isn't clear what caused the damage, how they're getting along with fixing it, or why events transpire they way they do. There are several plot developments which aren't sufficiently trailed, and it felt to me that this was a case of rushed exposition rather than design. While there are no obvious flaws in the special effects as presented, you do get the sense they've been filmed carefully so as not to over-expose their limitations: blurring, jarring jump-cuts, lens flare and so forth are creatively employed. As a result, you have no choice but to let the ambiguity and incoherence wash over you and enjoy the film for the questions it asks and the images it presents, rather than a coherent statement of a narrative arc.

This becomes harder to do as the film reaches its conclusion, where it becomes more character and plot driven than in the early exchanges. Here the rushed exposition does let the film down: None of the characters are particularly well expounded (there is an early fight between two of them that is never explained), and a little bit more attention to back story might have helped clarify the narrative intent. Sunshine isn't an overly long film, and you do sense a "director's cut" adding in some of this back story would make a difference. Searle's character, for example, definitely had more scope for depth than was ultimately expounded, and more attention could have been paid to the plight of Icarus I.

The Amazon readership has marked Sunshine very harshly: Perhaps they expected something like Armageddon: This is definitely at the other end of the science fiction spectrum. It is a film which would repay re-watching for sure.

Olly Buxton

AWFUL! - Don't waste your time. This movie is not well written and the actor's talents are wasted (except for the one pilot girl....they could have done with her fake doe eyed face). An awful movie.

PERFECT (until the last 45 minutes) - perfect sci-fi flick until Chris Evans cracks a joke about a monster picking them off one by one...



which is exactly what happens, turning this into just another sci-fi monster movie.

It's just...OK nothing major.... - AV and PQ were great 5 stars. I got bored watching 50-60% of the movie. I guess for me anyway I was hoping for something with more action and stuff like Star Wars or Star Trek....but it was still a good Sci-fi. Get it.

Well done and awe inspiring. - I could go into detail about how well done this movie is, from the solid acting to the beautifully bright cinematography, contrasted with the dark interiors (and emotions) rooted inside the ship, but I'd rather tell a little story.

This film was introduced to me by a friend who I've known to have excellent taste in film. I've spent many nights watching movies at 3am, discussing the nuances of editing and production at his pad. When I first saw the cover of Sunshine, 2001: A Space Odyssey popped into my head (this seems to happen with every "space movie"), and my instant thought was "in no way in hell is this going to be better". I then thought of Armageddon, and my mood turned even more grim. I saw that it was directed by Danny Boyle, which was nice, and that Cillian Murphy was in it, which was another big selling point, as I've seen almost all of his films, and he tends to do an absolutely wonderful job on screen. I was still not particularly enthusiastic, but decided to give it a chance due to the previous two reasons.

So, we finished some cigarettes outside, got some snacks ready, and a couple of us headed down into our makeshift movie theater, which happened to be a dim basement lacking windows, which was full of couches at the time, and had a large, white wall which we used as a screen for our projector. It was a perfect, comfy, and notably dark setup. The film started.

My expectations were shattered. Not just by the film itself, but also by how much depth the environment in which it was viewed added to it. That pitch-black basement was perfect for conveying the awesome power and blinding quality of the sun depicted in Sunshine. (I imagine seeing this movie in a theater would be similarly striking, especially on a large screen!) The plot was good, with enough twists and the right pacing to keep it going, if a little bit on the typical sci-fi mission side (I would argue that the way the characters reacted to the plot made it much more unique), the actors did their parts well and believably so, and it was over in under two hours, which, for the record, felt like much longer; The film sort of held us in stasis as everything moved along in front of us. The sun itself was the best character in the film, in my opinion. A dangerous giant, looming just outside, gazing into the ship as the story unfolded. I looked forward to every silent moment in which Cillian's or any other character gazed into that sphere of fiery light. This is definitely where Sunshine proved to hold its own in the genre.

My favorite part, hands down, actually took place after the movie. As we climbed the stairs and headed outside for some fresh air, memories of Sunshine fresh in our minds, we came across the sunset, which, by coincidence, occurred just as we finished the movie. It was beyond breathtaking. From the cold silence of a dark, doomed spaceship, to the faint, organic chirping of nature, coupled with a soft, golden light... I can't describe it.

Definitely one of my favorite sci-fi flicks, but I still found it lacked that little bit more to push it to 5/5. Perhaps the characters weren't memorable enough... The actors certainly portrayed them well, but I felt they were rather basic. Not too bad of a flaw, because this film easily shines more through the conflict and the harsh contrast presented through the setting, and not through characters with extensive backgrounds and iconic personalities; the setting itself had more than enough personality to drive the plot forward, and the characters insane!

I encourage anyone who enjoys a good, more seriously toned sci-fi flick to watch this one, especially if you time the ending with the sunset in your area. It really brings out the magnitude of the situation in the film, and was one of the more unique experiences I've had with a good movie in recent memory.

Too Bad, Great Start, Silly Finish. - A lot of others have already said this. This film had such potential with a very interesting premise, very good cast and excellent effects and then it just got silly and weird. I don't know why Boyle thought he needed to add the horror factor, the first 2/3rds of the film are very interesting and wholly original (and even pays homage to earlier space disaster films). Too bad, I really wanted to like this one, I still give it 3 stars for the first part of the film.

The Plot Has to Make Sense Before You Can Care About the Existential Stuff - *****This review may contain SPOILERS******

I watched "Sunshine" expecting a grade B movie. Instead, I found a movie that tried to be profound and failed. Meaning making fun of it like I'd anticipated was hard.

Since the movie really did try to take things seriously, then I must mention that if this had been a real space operation, it would have been the most poorly designed manned spaceflight mission ever.

For one thing, why was only one person trained to detonate the bomb which was the critical part of the mission? In fact, the crew overall seems locked into their own specialties with no cross training. When the fate of humanity rides on that mission, you'd think everyone would be trained to do everyone elses' job.

Second, why was there no contingency plan created before they left Earth for what to do if they ran into the "Icarus I?" Considering they knew it disappeared somewhere close to the sun, they would have known it was a possibility. Why didn't they plan for it?

Third, why was only one man doing critical calculations for adjusting their course? During modern spaceflights, calculations are double and triple checked by multiple people to reduce the risk of errors. Why wasn't every crew member making these critical calculations?

Fourth, when there's a fire on a space ship, you'd think that a ton of alarms would go off.

Sure, I know the movie was reaching for existential questions and answers. I found such poor mission planning detracted from speculating over such questions, though, as I kept pondering why in the face of extinction they would resort to such poor planning.

In addition, the film was hard to follow (my husband had a hard time figuring out who the homicidal captain was until I explained it to him, and when Capa appeared on the portion of the ship carrying the payload without a space suit on after having been in a space suit last we saw we both had a hard time figuring out what happened), there were inconsistencies (when Capa was questioning the computer about their oxygen supplies he was told they had 19 hours left until they could detonate the bomb, yet all that happened when he found out about the fifth crew member seemed to go down in only an hour tops, not 19), and really was just hard to get into. I felt detached and uninvested throughout the whole film.

Bottom line, save yourself some time and skip this movie.

WHY A MANNED MISSION? - Yes, the science is bad. Why a manned mission and not use that autopilot that took them the whole way there? I also thought that the sun expands as it burns out. The whole plan then goes bad when the oriental guy makes a math error. How believable is that? The box says there was only one woman on the trip. Is there something about that second woman I don't know about? As the ship approaches Mercury to jump start the sun, it gets a distress call from the first ship that attempted this same thing. They opt to go pick up its payload (another big bomb) to give themselves 2 chances at jump starting the sun. Enroute, things mess up, people die the ship gets damaged so now they have to go to the other ship if they have any hope of getting back to earth. They dock with the ship, then become disconnected. More people die, the ship gets damaged some more as this quickly becomes a suicide mission with people fighting "inside a burning building."