Silent Running + 2001 + 2010 (!) + Alien + Solaris (both versions) + The Posideon Adventure + 28 Days Later (hence the “minus.”) These are the jigsaw pieces. Luckily, much if not most of Sunshine is shot and assembled in a tremendous fashion. There were whole sequences when I was sick with excitement. So much of this film works and really works well. (One scene would have had more impact had I not seen the exact same scenario on last season’s Battlestar Galactica, but that’s no one’s fault — still, I imagine Boyle & co. were pretty pissed about this.)
There were a few things here and there that I didn’t buy, but I was totally willing to let it slide. . .until one story element that was okay at first but just didn’t go away. I won’t say what for fear of spoiling, but if you saw this already, you know what I’m talking about.
Every production design award goes to this film. Story-wise, sure, nothing new under the sun, but the look is very original given the parameters.
Also: a very upsetting movie! Violent! Depressing, kinda. No way I’m sleeping tonight without nightmares!
Oh, and the guy who plays Mace — Johnny Torch from Fantastic Four — it’s a hard freakin’ role. It’s the role that is most ripped straight from the “Armageddon” playbook. Anyway, he’s given some rather unsubtle lines to deliver . . .he does the best he can but it prompted some deserved chuckles from the full crowd at the Landmark (ahem) Sunshine this evening. You’d need to be some kind of super actor man — you’d need to me Michael Ironside level of good to deliver those lines without stinkin’ up the place.