The plot is straightforward. The sun is dying and a mission is sent to drop a giant “solar†bomb on/in the sun to reignite it. The crew of 8 are meant to detach from the bomb and return home. An earlier mission (the spacecraft nicely called Icarus) failed for reasons unknown, and now the Icarus II is hoping to succeed. It will not be a spoiler to say that pretty much everything goes wrong. The cast includes Michelle Yeoh and Cillian Murphy and nobody else I have heard of.
I recommend this, but not as much as I had hoped. It is a Danny Boyle film, and I had hoped for something a little different out of a genre movie, just as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later offered a twist on our expectations, and also a little of Boyle’s dark humor. Instead we get a highly competent, and certainly gripping (I have no nails left), but otherwise entirely conventional sci-fi disaster movie: The Core made by adults who understand how to craft a movie. Everything takes a back seat to the special effects, which are terrific. The psychological drama of the crew falling apart and contemplating death doesn’t appear to concern Boyle at all, which is lucky because only Yeoh and Murphy appear able to act. The sun deserved a place in the credits, as there is wonderful use of light — blinding light — as the crew expose themselves to the sun voluntarily and involuntarily. Initially, it looks as though Boyle is offering an homage to 2001, as the dialogue is sparse and we are treated to endless shots of the spacecraft and its “payload.†But while Kubrick offered us a sedate, near silent, antiseptic future, Boyle’s is just plain loud, and every contemplative moment is displaced by the crash of machinery or drums and bass on the soundtrack. Near the end Boyle introduces an almost supernatural figure, which I think was unnecessary and a cheap plot device.
I have made this sound worse than it is. I just had high expectations. It is a pleasure to see a genre movie executed this well, but he could have done more.