Words From The Dark Side: Sunshine [2007]:

The Tag-line to Sunshine is stark and true: If the sun dies, so do we.

The premise is stated in the opening monologue:

CAPA:

Our sun is dying. Mankind faces extinction. Seven years ago the Icarus project sent a mission to restart the sun but that mission was lost before it reached the star. Sixteen months ago, I, Robert Capa, and a crew of seven, left earth frozen in a solar winter. Our payload: a stellar bomb with a mass equivalent to Manhattan Island. Our purpose: to create a star within a star. Eight astronauts strapped to the back of a bomb. My bomb. Welcome to the Icarus Two.

Sunshine is an intense, intelligent and realistic science-fiction thriller, made more compelling because it could one day become science-fact if our nearest star does start to die ... which, indeed, it inexorably will. Their already dangerous mission: to reignite the sun by exploding a gigantic nuclear bomb at its core, is further complicated when they answer a distress beacon from the ill-fated Icarus I craft and uncover what really happened to the crew of that earlier failed mission. Sunshine concentrates on the human aspect of its characters, how they deal with the closed-in environment of the ship as their mission takes years to complete, the pressure of being together when personalities clash, the looming threat of extinction if their mission fails, the sense of isolation – at being so far from home, ultimately leading to insanity, religious mania, and murder for one character.

I love everything about this movie, but I have chosen one scene in particular, the death of Kaneda, for its technical brilliance, powerful soundtrack, and for the depth and intensity of the emotion through the faultless acting. Seldom in movies is a death scene so genuinely moving.

I have left out the majority of the intercut scenes on board the ship and focused mainly on Capa and Kaneda’s section on the solar shield.

Cassie is played by Rose Byrne, Searle by Cliff Curtis, Harvey by Troy Garity, and the voice of Icarus, the on-board computer AI, is voiced by Chipo Chung.

Scene: Kaneda’s death.

On board Icarus II.

Under stress, concentrating on getting the trajectory right, Trey [Benedict Wong] forgets to re-align the panels on the forward protective shield. Solar winds cause a hydraulic burn-out in four of the reflective panels, causing them to remain open.

Captain Kaneda [Hiroyuki Sanada], and physicist Capa [Cillian Murphy], go EVA to manually close each panel.

Cassie takes manual control, tilting the ship and the shield to provide enough shade from the sun for the men to work on the panels:

Kaneda and Capa successfully close the first panel:

The crew congratulate them and they move on to repair the other three panels:

The euphoria among the crew is short-lived: a fire breaks out in the ship’s oxygen garden.
Kaneda points out that the priority is to protect the pay-load and orders the on-board computer, Icarus, to resume control. Icarus begins the process of returning the shield to its original position: