Perhaps the only advantage of having to depend on a small town cinema during summers: I get the opportunity to watch movies I missed when they were screened in Trondheim. As was the case of “Sunshine“.

In 2050, the Sun is about to stop burning, and a crew of astronauts and scientists are sent out to relight it. This is the Icarus 2 mission (a remarkably dumb name, really) — “2″ because all contact was lost with the original Icarus, seven years earlier. The Icarus 2 is basically just a space station attached to a enormous payload — consisting of every scrap of splitable material on Earth — with an even larger solar shield in front of it. It carries a crew of 7, and when we first meet them they have been out for 16 months, and are about to enter the Sun’s “dead zone”, where no communication with Earth will be possible. However, when orbiting Mercury, they receive a distress signal from the Icarus 1…

Plot wise, this is fantasy disguised as science fiction — at least according to Rod Serlings definition: “Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.” Much as “Children of Men”, when I come to think of it. Why? Well, first of all because the basic premise of “Sunsine” is impossible — the Sun will not stop shining for quite a while yet, and when it does, a paltry little atomic bomb isn’t gonna help much. However, as impossible as this is, Danny Boyle and his crew manages to make the premise probable, therefore marking it as Fantasy. (It can also be seen as Epic Fantasy, if you just draw the comparison between “Sunshine”’s quest to the Sun, and “The Lord of the Rings”‘ quest to Mount Doom far enough.) As for the theme of the movie, after watching it, I think I can actually agree with the reviewer who refered to it as an “eco thriller with frighteningly great present interest”. If you ignore the analogical interpretations of the movie, it’s easy to reject this review as ridiculous nonesense. But when taking into account that the Icarus mission actually represented humanity’s final, desperate attempt at saving their mortally wounded planet, the present interest becomes so much clearer.

This part of it all worked quite well, I thought. The effects were stunning — much like the ones in “The Fountain” — as it should be, considering that the flamin’ Sun (bad pun intended) is the main element of the backgrounds. The acting was superb, with Cilian Murphy and Chris Evans as the two most prominent. The latter’s character — Mace — was also impressive, belitteling all the other characters in comparison, and standing out as the most pragmatic, focused and eventually heroic of the crew.

The to the bad part: For various reasons, the Icarus 2 crew are forced to seek out the Icarus 1, something which causes a horror-like chaos to erupt. And this part felt redundant, strained, and alien, when seen in relation to the rest of the plot, ruining it completely. This should have been resolved another way, for as it is, it is just too ridiculous, and distracting to the movie as a whole.

When it comes to the movie as a whole, I don’t think there’s any denying that it is great little flick, well worth a 7.5/10 (something that forces me to reduce “Pirates 3″ to a 6.0). However, if they’d handled the ending better, this might have been sniffing at the 9 point mark. Too bad.