The Pitch: I'm
Danny Boyle. Give me money. I have an idea.
I'm going to see every movie that Rose Byrne has
been in. That's just a thing that's going to happen. I try not to be a creep
about every actress I find attractive, but this is one I'm owning up to. I'll
track them all down eventually*. So, in honor of her 40th birthday, I tracked
this mostly forgotten Danny Boyle movie down.
*In case you are wondering, I've still got a lot of
movies to go.
Actually, calling it forgotten is unfair. It's
better to call it easily confused. I could come up with about a half-dozen
movies that I've confused this for at some point. Sphere. Dark City.
The Core. Pandorum...OK, that's all that comes to mind right now,
but my point stands.
I fully didn't get this movie. On most every level.
I didn't go into it prepared for a dump of technical information, so I lost
track of the mission right away and never caught up. When something went wrong,
like the damaging of the solar panels, I didn't know what that meant. I wasn't
sure why they were investigating the other ship. I was fully lost by what was
going on with the first ship's captain. Is he, like, a sun demon now? I'm sure
that some of it is my fault for not paying better attention. I think there is a
density to the movie though. It's similar to something like Dunkirk or Mad
Mad: Fury Road. I can figure out the basics from one viewing, but I needed
a second or third viewing to really understand the nuts and bolts.
Unfortunately, I didn't like Sunshine enough to want to rewatch it to
figure the rest out.
It's funny how transparently Danny Boyle (director)
and Alex Garland (writer) were inspired by movies like Alien and 2001:
A Space Odyssey*. Danny Boyle is one of those directors who would rather
try something new than become proficient at one kind of movie. He followed this
with Slumdog Millionaire and preceded it with Millions and 28
Days Later before that. If you can see a through line there, you're a
smarter person than I am. The downside to this is that he opens himself to more
misses. I'd say that this brand of Sci-Fi isn't one of his strengths.
*Also Solaris,
which I didn't find out until reading about Sunshine later. I didn't see
it at the time, but I do now.
This is a fun cast though. There's peak
"Hollywood trying to make him a leading man" Cillian Murphy. There's
pre-Captain America, still-Human Torch Chris Evans. Pre-Damages Rose
Byrne. Michelle Yeoh right before Hollywood decided to give up on her. Hiroyuki
Sanada, Benedict Wong, Mark Strong. It's got a lot of people at very odd times
in their careers. There are no "discoveries" or reclamation projects.
Just a lot of people who are about to be a lot more or less familiar to
audiences.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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