| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
B- |
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| Acting: |
B |
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| Direction: |
C- |
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| Visuals: |
A- |
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Too Lean To Be Action, Too Lame To Be Horror
by Doug (movies profile)
Mar 19, 2008
18
of
27 people found this review helpful
I went into this movie knowing little about it other than it was in the future, and that it was supposed to be a "save mankind" type of story.
The movie started out quite interesting, however slow. It did a good job of setting up the story even though the entire sequence of events leading up to the point where we are on the ship going to the sun was just quickly mentioned in a short narration. The filming and effects were very good and the characters were written well to give them a good sense of depth. The characters weren't really evil, but not completely good either. You get a similar feeling from another movie by this writer "28 Days Later", which shows how desperate everyday humans can get no matter how intelligent and civilized they think they are. Also like this movie it tends to switch major gears about 2/3 through it. However 28 days, does it without completely shooting itself in the foot, unlike Sunshine.
The first half or more of this movie is set up to be a typical dooms day action movie, such as the Core or Armageddon, except without the effects and the blowing up of landmarks. This movie cuts past all of that taking us to a point years later where the method of saving the world has already been devised, built, tested, and even tried once before. Yes, actually this is the second try and last chance human kind has for survival. This actually makes the initial story stand out, because its not the same "we have one shot at this, 3 days from now" type of action. A lot of technical jargon is used, so the movie begins to drag early on. When the crew starts to discuss rendezvouses with another ship and whatnot, I got the sense this would have made a better plot on a Star Trek episode.
There were at least 3 or 4 places you can feel comfortable going to the bathroom during this film. There are only a small handful of action sequences and of those I felt as though they have been done before.
Further into the movie it switches gears to more of a horror, Jason X meets Event Horizon, type of feel with almost annoying camera movement and audio that are the clues given so you know you are supposed to be scared. I found the space vacuum and immense heat outside the ship to be more frightening than the "bad guy". Unfortunately, this makes the film become even more unbelievable than the events already taking place. From this point on the movie just sort of "burns out" no pun intended and never really recovers. The last 15 minutes becomes a "cat and mouse game" that should have never happened. Personally, I believe the movie would have been better had they cut about 30mins out and kept on the original mission and plot, having more action along the way. If they were going to keep the same, tired, meaning of man bringing on his/her own destruction used in 28 days later, they should have at least used a more believable "bad guy".
Overall, the movie is certainly deeper than the average Hollywood action film at least on the character's standpoints. Just don't go into it thinking you're going to see the White House or Empire State Building melt from heavy radiation. |
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