Danny Boyle
Sunshine

Have you ever wanted to stare at the sun as a child, only to be inevitably overwhelmed by such an immense and radiant light? It's pointless to describe how fundamental this star is for our existence on Earth; every living being is born, lives, and dies under the unwavering gaze of the sun... and what if suddenly the sun started to go out?

It's with this premise that the film begins, the normal thermonuclear reactions that have always fueled the sun have started to slow down, inexorably leading to the extinction of the star itself. It's up to a handful of astronauts and scientists to restore balance by releasing a bomb of fissile material with the mass of the island of Manhattan to set things right. The ship Icarus 2 heads towards the Sun, aware of the fact that there is no more material left on Earth to create a new bomb.

Boyle here knows how to capture well the tensions and symptoms of what is, in fact, a last chance. Each member privately is consumed by the fear of failure; this contrasts with the sometimes terrible and sometimes redemptive vision of the huge ball of fire, many of the crew spend their time staring through special filters at this immense furnace that attracts the ship to the extreme limit. The relationship becomes obsessive as well, many keep staring, pushing themselves further and further by reducing the filtration of the screen, true baths of pure light... baths of immensity.

A small incident pushes the crew to deviate the route until they reach the vicinity of Mercury, where they pick up the distress signal of Icarus 1, a sister ship that seven years earlier had mysteriously disappeared while attempting to perform the same mission. The ship is empty, and the crew members dead due to a failure in the solar filters, which led to 100% exposure to sunlight, a unique experience but one that costs their lives.

I won't recount the sequel and the ending, which however does not fail to thrill the viewer with intrigues and events that will unfold in an inevitable conclusion.

The film is influenced by other movies, just notice a sense of claustrophobia and suspense in the endless corridors and labyrinths that make up the ship, already well-known in Sphere and Alien, or action scenes and daring incidents in films like Mission To Mars or Apollo 13.

Essentially a good movie, it lacks a bit of originality but overall knows how to capture and drag the viewer for a good hour and a half.