Stars:
* 1/2
Rating: R for violent
content and language
Run
Time: 1
hour, 49 minutes
Danny
Boyle, respected veteran of such edgy classics as “Trainspotting” and “28 Days
Later” needs to have his head examined for tackling this sci-fi “thriller”.
Talking
computers, claustrophobic space chambers and a mission gone badly awry, it’s
“Sunshine 2007: A Space Odyssey”. Generations have seen it before and all have
seen it done better.
Boyle muse
Cillian Murphy – he of the startling baby blues – is up front and center as
mission physicist Capa, the voice of reason on the Icarus II. No matter that he
and his seven stunning colleagues are so youthful that they might have a
thimbleful of experience among them. Modeling contracts, yes. Advanced degrees,
I think not.
Their mission
is a daunting one: to reignite the sun whose light on earth appears to be
waning. If there is such a thing as sun junkies these guys are the poster boys
(and girls), manically hooked on that blazing star’s polarizing light.
Naturally
there was a ship that went before them and naturally it disappeared. Of course
they lose contact with the mother-planet within 24-hours and run perilously low
on oxygen. The fact that I didn’t care a lick reflects the been-there/done-that
quality of the script and the dead-end narrative.
So what’s
the hook? Well, missing ship Icarus starts transmitting a distress signal which
sends everyone into a tizzy. How is that possible when the crew is presumed
dead? Should they ditch their rendezvous with the sun and rescue their
ill-fated compatriots?
Veterans of
even a handful of “Star Trek” episodes know that the Icarus is up to no good but
our plucky crew is blissfully and heroically ignorant. Think Tippi Hedren
climbing to an attic bedroom to investigate the distant beating of wings and
you get the drift.
“Sunshine”
is crammed full of spacey buzz words and techno-concepts sure to satisfy the
most discerning sci-fi geeks. Iron content acting as a super-antenna, payloads
delivered to the heart of a star, supersymetric nuclear fusion, oh baby!
It’s an
odyssey of stupidity with one bad decision piling on another. Crack navigator
Trey (Benedict Wong) makes a calculation error with dire consequences and
spends the next hour flogging himself until he’s mercifully shut up for good. Biologist
Corazon (ass-kicking martial artist Michelle Yeoh) doesn’t bust a single move
but tenderly and optimistically tends to the ship’s magical garden. Zzzzzzz.
Visuals are
brilliant throughout but lost in a quick-cutting style so spare as to be
subliminal. Climactic act is a bloody and bewildering frenzy of loin and limb.
Cancel the
ticker tape parade because these guys are doomed to breathe their last breaths
in an imploding black hole, where no one can hear them scream.