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:
 

Kaneda and Capa race to close the panels before they are killed and the ship is destroyed.

The crew are forced to flood the oxygen garden with O2, causing a flash that makes the fire burn itself out:

Realizing his fate and that he has to sacrifice himself to save Capa and the rest of the crew, Kaneda orders Capa back to the airlock:

ICARUS:

Eighty-nine percent of shield in full sunlight.

KANEDA:

Capa, go back. I’ll finish this.

CAPA:

Please, I can do this.

KANEDA:

Go.

CAPA:

Capa returning to airlock. Do you copy? Capa returning to airlock. Do you copy?

CASSIE:

Copy, Capa. Hurry.

ICARUS:

Ninety-one percent of shield in full sunlight.

ICARUS:

Ninety-four percent of shield in full sunlight.

CAPA:

Captain? Captain? I’m at the edge of the shield. Do you copy? Captain, you must leave now. Captain?

ICARUS:

Ninety-seven percent of shield in full sunlight.

KANEDA:

Final panel closing. The shield is secure.

CAPA:

You have to move now. Captain, it’s right on you.

HARVEY:

Kaneda’s not gonna make it.

CAPA:

You have to move! You have to move now!

HARVEY:

It’s too far.

CAPA:

Captain, move! Why isn’t he moving?

SEARLE:

Kaneda, what do you see?

CAPA:

Searle, tell him to move!

SEARLE:

Kaneda, what can you see?

CAPA:

Searle, do you copy?

SEARLE:

Kaneda!

CAPA:

Searle!

SEARLE:

Kaneda!

Kaneda screams.

SEARLE:

Kaneda!

Capa screams as he barely manages to swing below the safety of the shield.

ICARUS:

Shield rotation complete.

Taking Lives (2004)

I love thrillers, but sadly this ‘psychological thriller’ is downright stupid. It’s based on a novel by Michael Pye. I’m unable to make a comparison between the source novel and movie adaptation because, as of this writing, I haven’t read the book. I have heard that the movie is a ‘loose’ adaptation … which would explain a lot.

A pity because Taking Lives starts well:

Martin Asher (Paul Dano) is a teenager during the early 1980s. During a bus journey, he is befriended by rebel Matt Soulsby (Justin Chatwin – who also played Tom Cruise’s irritating, ingrate teenage son in War of the Worlds (2005)). As they switch from bus to car and continue their journey to Seattle, they talk and it seems, on the surface, that they have a lot in common. Until things turn sinister when the front tire is punctured and, while Matt struggles to loosen the wheel nuts, Martin remarks how they are both about the same height. As Matt is wondering why he said it, Martin suddenly kicks him in the path of an oncoming van.

It’s then apparent that Martin Asher is not a well lad … not well in the head … not well at all. 

Martin then steals his wallet, his identity, guitar and wanders up a hillside imitating the way Matt sang, effectively taking his life. Did someone tell Martin to “get a life” and he took the advice the wrong way?

Twenty years pass, Ethan Hawke now plays Martin, which is a casting mistake because, as fine an actor as he is, it’s a problem with continuity, the actor looks completely different from Paul Dano, with totally different facial bone structure and there’s no way, without some radical surgery, Dano would mature to look like Hawke.

Anyway, back to the crappy movie …

Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie), is an FBI profiler. Apparently she has some sort of psychic gift because she lays around in empty graves because it – somehow! – makes her a better profiler. Ummm … OK! But she isn’t that gifted because she didn’t figure out that Martin (Hawke) was the killer and titular taker of lives, or that Kiefer Sutherland’s character is a half-baked red-herring.

Then there’s the usual clichéd fitting-in-with-the-team tension between Illeana and the Montreal cops … a set-up … a car chase … an explosion … a laughably awkward love scene … 

the gruesome crime scene photos above Illeana’s bed because it helps her be a better profiler. Ummm … OK! … even though she still can’t figure out that weirdo Martin is the killer when the rest of us have … because it’s so glaringly obvious!

Martin’s old mom (Gena Rowlands) comes to town and she’s also none-too-pleased with her wayward, homicidal son’s goings on, probably wishing she’d smacked his ass harder the day he was born! She doesn’t get the chance though because Martin cuts off her head in the elevator.

Only then does it dawn on Illeana, when she sees Martin with mom’s head in one hand and the wire in the other, covered in her blood, with the elevator also covered in blood … that something’s not quite right with him.

Cue recriminations from Illeana’s peers and self-loathing as she scrubs herself in the shower. 

And the inevitable and unremarkable final showdown and twist is yet to come … if you want to bother. 

There is some effective cinematography, particularly with the house she chose to stake herself out in at the end:

But overall, the movie was boring, stupid, the plot was simplified and the twists obvious from the start with an ending that fizzled. The cast, all impressive actors, were wasted in this and let down by a lame script.

Some might argue that this movie isn’t that bad. Granted, compared to other garbage out there, it’s a passable way to spend a couple of hours. But it could have been a whole lot better than it was, and the selling tagline on the poster - He would kill to be you. – resonates in my mind and I would have happily traded places for someone else to have sat through this movie instead of me.