After all the critical acclaim heaped upon Danny Boyle and Alex Garland for helping to redefine the zombie flick with 28 Days Later..., I was definitely excited to see if something similar could be done with the science fiction genre. Granted, there are plenty of recent space movies but they've all focused on action and big screen effects. Could these guys do something special again, something along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

In Sunshine we're presented the notion that years in the future the civilization of mankind is pushed to the brink of extinction due to severe weather change. No, boys and girls, this weather change is not brought on by greenhouse gases causing global warming — quite the contrary — they're brought on because the sun as been reduced to a smoldering ember. And without heat and light the earth has become a mostly frozen wasteland. Enter a team of eight astronauts charged with flying a spacecraft, The Icarus II (ironic name, eh?), to the sun and delivering a payload which upon exploding will cause a reaction, reigniting the heat-producing star. Sounds like a walk in park, right?

Well of course, things can never go right for our heroes and heroines. And that is where Sunshine remains true to its thriller roots. To build up drama and suspense, problems are cascaded into the path of Earth's saviors (similar to Armageddon and The Core). The shields fail when changing trajectory, so a space walk is needed to repair the damage. How bad can an emergency space walk go? A fire breaks and destroys the oxygen producing labs (a mini bio-dome). To survive, you've got to have air to breathe, right? Docking and undocking to dead craft in the middle of space can be done with your eyes closed, can't it? Of course it can! Above all else, who would expect something unexpected while exploring that same ominous ship? Certainly not me.