Sunshine

Sunshine is a sci-fi adventure unlike any I've seen before. Visionary director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) has created his most expansive and exciting feature yet, taking his gift for the harrowing and the surreal into the depths of space where the possibilities are as boundless as his imagination. It's with this film that the oft-consider cult-ish Boyle embarks on a full-fledged journey into explosive fantasy filmmaking, the sheer scope of which he has not previously attempted. Thankfully, he's brought along his withering, stark sense of mortality and peril as well as his genius knack for making characters who we care about in the face of dangers of a somewhat absurd nature.

In this case, we're some years in the future traveling on board Icarus II, a spacecraft headed into the heart of the sun to deliver a bomb the size of Manhattan that is expected to reignite the dying star and save mankind from a deathly freeze. The crew on board is dealing with the physical strains of spending years hard at work in outer space as well as the psychological complications of their pressure ridden, highly dangerous voyage. They're all deeply plagued by the knowledge that the first Icarus project failed mysteriously and each crew member grapples in his or her own way with the thought that they too could end up failing, perhaps dying in the far reaches of space.

The crew's makeshift leader is the reluctant Capa (Cillian Murphy) who's called upon, as the ship's physicist, to make potentially dangerous choices regarding the most effective means of delivering the ship's payload. The rest of the crew includes the hot headed but steadfast Mace (Chris Evans) and the reassuring, but hardly optimistic Cassie (Rose Byrne). Exposing the unforeseeable twists and turns of Icarus II's journey would spoil the experience. Suffice it to say there's a lot more at work here than anyone would naturally expect upon entering the theater. The film itself morphs quite flawlessly with each new emergence of crisis. It progresses steadfastly from quiet character drama into a more intense thriller and then closes with a pulse pounding finale that's full of some of the best, and most emotionally gratifying special effects in years. CGI has never served a more wondrous and unexpectedly beautiful purpose than it does in the unforgettable final frames of this film.

The whole film is breathtakingly beautiful and yet equally haunting. There's an eerily gorgeous quality to a ship bathed in the bright light of a nearing sun and Boyle takes full advantage of it. The glowing wash of pure sunlight and the radiance of a devastating fire are somehow transformed into opportunities for lush, layered frames of shocking beauty. As vicious a storyteller as Boyle may be (and Sunshine certainly has teeth enough to back that up), he's also a great wonder with making beautiful and unforgettable frames out of his cruel and wondrous tales. He's truly one of a kind and can only be expected to deliver even grander and more satisfying mini-epics in the years to come.

Grade: A