"Sun" Shines Bright

It's always a gamble when an established director tries his hand at the science fiction genre. At best, you get results like "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Alien", at worst you get "Solaris" or "Alien: Resurrection". But genre-jumping director Danny Boyle always does his research; he knows the rules of any genre he tackles. And while "Sunshine" - his story of 8 astronauts sent to reignite our dying Sun - isn't quite the "re-invention" we might expect from the man who made zombie horror cool again, it has stellar visuals, a moody soundtrack and, unlike its beleaguered heroes, atmosphere to spare.

Like "Minority Report", "Sunshine" is set in a way-too-soon-to-account-for-the-technology 50 years in the future. For reasons wisely left unexplained, our Sun's 5 billion year lifecycle is ending unexpectedly early and humans, plucky as ever, are trying to help out. The remedy is a super-cool ship called Icarus II designed to detonate a "mini Big Bang" in the heart of the Sun, thereby giving it just the kick-start it needs warm the cockles (and everything else) of all those human hearts. The ship is, in essence, a high-tech set of jumper cables.

Icarus II is manned by eight astronauts of varying skills and character arcs, including the oddly-cast Michelle Yeoh as the ship's botanist, diamond-eyed Cillian Murphy as their physicist, Cliff Curtis as the ship's freakily-calm psychiatrist, and Johnny Storm himself, Chris Evans (nicely dialing down the mugging), as their ace engineer, Ace. None of the characters are particularly engaging, but the actors are charismatic enough to hold interest. When the crew picks up a distress call (don't they always) from the ship's ill-fated predecessor, the Icarus I (lost seven years ago), things go, as you might imagine, horribly awry.

The script, by frequent Boyle collaborator Alex Garland ("28 Days Later", "The Beach") follows some classic sci-fi plot points - most notably, the crew member with a screw loose - but its intriguing premise and grounded execution keep it from becoming "The Core" in space. Too often "Sunshine" takes predictable detours into slasher territory, and the ending goes on laughably long (and throws science right out the airlock), but the film's visual design and Mr. Boyle's claustrophobic direction make "Sunshine" burn brightly before fading out. The Sun has never looked so hot.