With a (currently) 7.3 user rating, I was looking forward to what I hoped would be a decent movie. What a letdown. I suppose I should have paid more attention to the reviewer that said, "One word of advice: this movie is not for nitpickers or physicist," yet still gave it 8 stars.

I'm neither a nitpicker nor a physicist, but as a reasonably intelligent person there are limits to how far I am willing to suspend disbelief. The whole premise of the movie is on very shaky ground: The sun is dying and the first mission to launch some kind of bomb into the sun failed, so mankind has sent the second, and this is our Last Hope.

Now, this bomb, whatever it's supposed to be and to do, is not really explained very well. I gather that the specifics are given here on IMDb and the movie's website; kind of odd to leave that out of the movie itself. I'm also not sure how a bomb with the mass of Manhattan is supposed to reignite the sun, which can fit 1,000,000 Earths inside of it, but then perhaps I'm being nit-picky.

The next thing that begs explanation is why they need to get so close to the sun to launch this bomb in the first place. Why not launch it from the vicinity of, say, Venus's orbit? We can make pinpoint unmanned landings on Mars, but a target the size of the sun seems to be a problem.

The physicist is the only one who knows how to properly turn the key and hit the launch button on the bomb (say what?), yet he is 'volunteered' to go on a dangerous spacewalk with no objections. Later on he is given the only spacesuit so that he is assured survival. Apparently his essentialness comes and goes.

After various implausible mishaps involving human error and a computer that only seems to correct these errors when it's in the mood, we learn that they only have enough oxygen for 4 people to make it to the launch point. Now, this ship is huge. I mean really, really big. It's also full of air. Remember Apollo 13, with 3 guys in the tiny capsule/lunar module? Even they had enough air to get back home. Yet, 5 people on this massive ship would use up all the O2 in less than a day.

I could go on a lot longer, and you can read other reviews for even more ludicrous problems with this script, but you get my drift here. Yes, visually the exterior shots are great, though random, without giving a sense of "where" things are happening. Looking pretty isn't enough to save this movie, however.

Danny Boyle outdoes himself with this science fiction masterpiece, which offers a suspenseful and unpredictable story with interesting, well developed characters. The basic premise is that a crew of astronauts must reignite the Earth's Sun with a nuclear bomb in an effort to prevent it from going out permanently. That's the main story point of the film but ultimately Sunshine is really about the characters. More specifically their interactions with each other, the tough choices they have to make, and their ultimate deterioration as people throughout the dangerous and deadly voyage.

Sunshine is both entertaining and suspenseful throughout its 100 minute run time. Its extraordinarily well directed and acted and has great special effects and shot composition as well. If there are a couple flaws in the movie it would be some poor choices of editing towards the end of the movie and some questionable character logic every once in a while. But besides those little nit picks this is one of the finest Sci Fi movies of the century. Definitely give it a watch.

Film Review: "Sunshine" (2007)

With over one year in post-production after principal photography in the year of 2005, Director Danny Boyle delivers a stand-out independent science-fiction thriller produced by DNA films, who had engaged Alex Garland as screenwriter and Andrew MacDonald as producer. Together they send a classic scenario of a spaceship crew on a mission to revive the sun by shooting a nuke into its core. The cast surrounds actor Cillian Murphy as Robert Capa, who keeps his nerve, while all other, including Cliff Curtis, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh and Hiroyuki Sanada as space-walking, sunshield-repairing and ultimately sunlight-confronting Captain Kaneda, slowly get consumed by an space-travel assignment that is believed to be suicide in the name of humanity in the purest sense.

Director Danny Boyle, clearly admiring Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) and "Alien" (1979) directed by Ridley Scott, makes his own signature mark on the genre of science-fiction with the picture "Sunshine", benefiting from Alwin Küchler's innovative as striking cinematography embedded in golden gloss of the death-bringing star in the midst of our solar system underlined with a mesmerizing original soundtrack by composer John Murphy, who created with his track "Adagio in D Minor" an ear-piercing high-emotion pitching centerpiece of music, which carries the main theme within the constant pounding, constant thrilling film for a 100 minutes throughout to be encountered by the unknowing as returning viewers alike.

© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)