The sun is dying and Earths last hope rests in the hands of the Icarus II. They must travel to the sun and detonate a massive bomb in order to save all life.  Sunshine has all the elements of the sci-fi genre. You have people in the future traveling to outer space with a bomb the size of Manhattan to reignite the sun in order to save the word from destruction. There is some truth based in the film though. The sun will eventually die out…but not for a long time hopefully. The plot is definitely interesting with the whole reignite the sun theory. You have great actors including Cillian Murphy and Hiroyuki Sanada and an interesting plot but then the film direction completely messes it up. With many of the shots of the sun or the ship, I had no idea what I was looking at. Things would constantly change where basically all you saw was different shades of sunlight and blackness. Same goes for the story. By the time you knew what the crew was planning to do, they had already done it. There was not much of a real setup before things happened. It was definitely a let down for me.

The special features are mediocre. Included with the commentary are deleted scenes (with optional commentary as well), webisodes that act as a “making-of” feature, and a few short films. The short films, Dad’s Dead and Mole Hills, were interesting and horrible, respectively. The art in Dad’s Dead was beautifully done and it simply fit together perfectly. Mole Hills, however, was just 7 minutes of the same scene with people and cars walking by. No words, no plot, not much of anything really. There might have been some deeper meaning but I never saw it. The webisodes were the most interesting. They interviewed the cast and the director and went into much of the details as to how the film was made.

Sunshine takes an interesting plot and turns it into a mediocre film. It starts out okay but then it’s just a downward spiral from there. The special features add a bit more insight for the film but not much. If you’re looking for something new to watch and don’t have much to do then this might tide you over till something better comes. For an average film with average special features, it gets an average grade.