Two things up front: Firstly, anyone who's read this far into the reviews knows the plot of this thing (astronauts chucking a bomb-- if not themselves-- into the dying sun in order to revive it). Secondly, the following is as disjointed as the film it addresses.<br /><br />So many glowing reviews I've read for "Sunshine" seem to center around the idea that one must simply give in to the power and majesty of the film's visuals. That is to say, one must in the presence of "Sunshine" emphasize oohing and ahhing over thinking.<br /><br />I'm sorry: I can't do that. Ironically, if "Sunshine" were being touted as a dumb bit of fluff, I'd be far more likely to take it at face value. But "Sunshine"'s makers and culties have trumpeted their darling as a slice of intelligent sci-fi, oh-so-rare these days, etc.<br /><br />Frankly, it's not. That "intelligent" thing. Not a bit of it.<br /><br />Thoughts: If you hire a physicist to act as a consultant on your film, and if your screenwriter concocts backstories for your characters, and if you house your actors in bare-bones student digs and send them up in airplanes that permit them to experience zero-g, all so that they feel like "real" astronauts, and if all that consulting and all those stories and all that experience don't end up on the screen-- i.e., if you expect us viewers to mine the film's websites for this science and these tales-- then you as a filmmaker (that means you, Mr. Boyle) haven't done your job. Simple.<br /><br />We don't know who these characters are, so we don't care about them. Sure, Rose Byrne has her teary brown doe-eyes, so she captures an instant sympathy vote, and Hiroyuki Sanada draws us in with his calm and his silky voice. But the rest of 'em? Cillian Murphy comes off as a stoner and a bit of a jerk, and Chris Evans tries desperately to make something of the "duty" card he's been dealt, but the rest of 'em are ciphers. Alex Garland seems to think that character development is for sissies-- or that it's certainly not important if you have a Big Idea (here "Our Lives Are Secondary to the Saving of All Humanity, Dontchaknow"). I politely suggest that he's dead wrong. If we don't give a rat's patootie about the characters, we certainly won't care about the idea in the service of which they're acting.<br /><br />And not only are they ciphers: they're inconsistent, too. Early on, Mace goads Capa, the only one capable of operating the stellar bomb (in itself a ridiculous idea: what, in sixteen months, Capa couldn't train a backup to turn the key and press the "LAUNCH" button? Job security, I guess.), into performing a highly dangerous repair job outside the ship. Then, later, when he and Capa and another of the Icarus II's hapless crew must execute an ill-advised human-cannon trick between two crippled airlocks (a situation that falls squarely between "Don't ask." and "What the hell?"), Mace insists that Capa take the only available spacesuit, as he's indispensable to the mission. Sure, Mace earlier may have been feeling piqued and petty, Capa having pulled a bit of a careless dumb with regard to their window for sending messages home, but the fact here is that it's not my job to make Mace's excuses. It's Mr. Garland's job, and his script simply doesn't deliver.<br /><br />Don't try to cover up the paper-thinness of your story by snowing us with special effects. It's insulting and annoying. Just how many useless beauty shots of the Icarus II does this movie contain, anyway? Not one of them helps us to know where we are on the ship. Also: if you can't afford the effects you wanted for your third-act mad slasher (did I already mention the "Don't ask." thing?), don't try to cover by shaking the camera and overexposing your shots every time said slasher is on screen. That takes "annoying" clear up to "blatantly irritating."<br /><br />Smart people creating jeopardy by making dumb choices or nonsensically arbitrary decisions is less likely to evoke sympathy than smart people who find themselves in peril because of natural disasters or mechanical catastrophes. That is, a supposedly smart guy who makes a calculation that leads to half a spaceship going up in flames is less likely to earn a "You poor people!" from me than, say, a freak solar flare that leads to half of said spaceship going up in flames. And have I mentioned yet how much I despise selectively "smart" computers? As in, a computer that talks to you and calls you by name and yet can't tell you when half your spaceship has just caught on fire? (Not that it's entirely the computer's fault here, the fire thing: it happens during one of "Sunshine"'s many randomly placed beauty shots, so it's quite likely that the computer, like the viewing audience, isn't sure if the ship that catches fire is actually the Icarus II, the ship on which Our Story is taking place. "Oh, look: there's a ship on fire over there. Hey-- do you smell smoke...?")<br /><br />Selective flammability: Not only do Capa and the film's Mystery Slasher not burn up when Capa, hoping to effect a desperate getaway, yells "Full sunlight!" in the observation lounge of the Icarus II, the lounge itself doesn't burn up. By comparison, when the show's nutter psychologist (again: don't ask) tries the "full sunlight" thing, he burns up just fine, thank you.<br /><br />So: who gets the star? It's a split: Chris Evans, who tries so desperately to be the voice of reason (if only for a moment) on this ship of fools, and Underworld and John Murphy, who were obviously watching a much more intelligent, moving, and dramatic film when they concocted the score.<br /><br />Even though it's rare to see a movie so lovingly misconceived, you'd be wise to give this a miss. Dumb, depressing, muddled, and thoroughly unentertaining.