I went into the cinema with mixed expectations. The premise - a team of scientists sent with a giant bomb to return our dying sun to normal levels - seemed B-movie material of the worst kind. I could just imagine card-board cut-out characters, clichéd plot twists and a truck of scientific errors. Yet this is directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) so who knew, maybe he could work the same magic he did on zombie flicks on the disaster-in-space sub-genre. I am surprised to report Sunshine delivered on all of these points.<br /><br />Cillian Murphy, star of 28 Days Later, returns as ship's primary physicist, Capa. He and the rest of the 8 crew members of Manhattan-sized bomb Icarus II are on a mission to fix the Sun, which is cooling perilously. 16 months in and something forces a change of plan. The previous (failed) expedition is discovered floating in orbit of our star. It's when Capa makes the decision that they change course for the Icarus I that things start going wrong. One small mistake leads to great danger, which causes more havoc and forces the desperate saviours of humanity to take even more dangerous risks and so on, all culminating in an insane and murderous survivor rampaging through the ship with a motorised scalpel.<br /><br />Up until actually reaching the Icarus I, it's all so Apollo 13 and so good. Spot-on characterisation, beautiful long shots and rather familiar set design (watch out for the cockpit). But it's when Sunshine tries to be a psychological-thriller and a sci-fi and a horror flick and an action movie that it all starts to go horribly wrong as a film. It loses direction - maybe because Danny Boyle is too busy looking over the computer graphics guys' shoulders and saying "Ooh, that looks cool. Hey, how about we obscure half the action? Or put in pseudo-subliminal images? Or blur the screen?Orstoptheframe? Addsomeghostingthere!Andthere!Andblurthis! Andputaflashoflightthere!" Individually, each graphic trick that Boyle tries looks really, really cool and usually flows properly but when he throws them into the movie like Picasso throws paint, it gets very tiring awfully quickly. Quite frankly, it gives me a headache even to remember it.<br /><br />What plot is full of holes, too. Some may actually have been explained but I must have blinked during those frames. For example, and worst by far, is that they seem to ignore the effect of the Sun's gravity for the most part. If an object is thrust parallel with the spin of the Sun, gravity should pull them towards it in a curve but instead they travel in a totally straight line. Bah.<br /><br />It's such a shame that Sunshine ends up so incomprehensible and random because it is packed full of good ideas. It's apparent that they tried to do too much at once and weren't critical enough to get rid of the stuff that was un-necessary or didn't work. Still, the 'lesser of two evils' theme running through certainly makes food for thought. It's refreshing to see such sensible characters who know what's at stake. Would you kill a friend to save humanity and all the solar system? What about three friends? More? That's the question isn't it...<br /><br />I can't recommend watching this film. It's smart, it's oh so beautiful, it's well acted... but it has collapsed under its own weight into nothing more than sun-scorched stardust. Go watch Pitch Black, or dig out that old VHS of Apollo 13, Alien or the Abyss. Anything. Just not this.