Sunshine
By Andrew Wright

Nifty sprinting zombies aside, the neatest trick of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later was how it went absolutely all out with its convictions, injecting energy and unexpected grace notes into a moribund genre. Sunshine, Boyle’s largest-scale film since the disastrous The Beach, tries a similar trick with another moldy premise—space mission goes wrong—with equally stunning results. It’s a trip and a half.

Alex Garland’s script posits a future that might make Al Gore reach for the Zantac: With Earth on the brink of icy extinction, a spaceship tows a city-sized bomb to the sun in hopes of a quick jumpstart. The premise may not be entirely original (see, or rather don’t, Chuck Heston in 1990’s Solar Crisis for further evidence), but it proves to be fertile ground for serious claustrophobia and some unexpected philosophical avenues, as the dwindling astronauts (including dreamy scientist Cillian Murphy, serene botanist Michelle Yeoh, and Chris Evans, winningly counter-cast as the most sensible member of the crew) come increasingly close to their ultimate destiny.

Boyle handles the flashy set pieces and overall downbeat melancholy with equal aplomb (when talking with the director recently, he happily copped to being a fan of John Carpenter’s Dark Star, which did cosmic cabin fever better than anybody). Still, for all of Sunshine’s considerable lean, B-movie virtuosity, the most impressive part (and what’s made the film stick in my head for nearly two months now) comes when the narrative jumps the rails in the third act, with results both quick-cut frenzied (courtesy of a murderous stowaway from a previous mission) and downright lyrical. The term “visionary” gets batted around a lot when it comes to the sci-fi genre, but in its final, blazing moments, Boyle’s dazzling, trip-hoppy space opera comes closer than most.

SUNSHINE DIR. DANNY BOYLE | RATED R | AT SELECT THEATERS IN LA AND OC