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Title: Failed to live up to its potential
Review: Sunshine has a great number of good points: beautiful cinematography, wonderful music, Budapest's great scenery, and a good cast. However, all these assets were wasted on soap opera-like melodrama and gratuitous sex scenes. The female characters, even Valerie to some extent, are cyphers that are only there to seduce the three characters played by Ralph Fiennes. I am disappointed with Mr. Fiennes' choice of roles in the past several years as he only seems to reprise his role in The English Patient over and over again. Instead of the melodrama and trite symbolism, the film could have further explored the characters' drives for assimilation and faith. The tumultuous political events and their impact on the characters' lives are not fully explored and only play second fiddle to Mr. Fiennes' posterior.
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