Ah, Sunshine... this could possibly be the perfection of the space disaster film.

Director Danny Boyle clearly didn't feel like following the clichés of similar sci-fi disaster films like The Core, Armageddon and Deep Impact... there's no people sitting around going "Hmm, something bad is going to happen!" type build up. Nope, Cillian Murphy gives us an explanatory voice over that cuts that down to about thirty seconds.

The science of this fiction is more fantasy than anything but unlike other films, it doesn't really try and explain away issues like... the apparently normal gravity on a ship that isn't discernably rotating and at a point in time where it seems unlikely that you'd be able to pipe gravity through a ship like central heating. Nothing about WHY the Sun suddenly starts to die, how a bomb the mass of Manhattan was transported into space, how it will work... How any material could do the kind of job of dissipating the heat of even a dying Sun at close proximity and allow for people to live comfortably just a few metres away is beyond me... and let's not get started on the travel times - although, mercifully they managed to get the travel time for light from Sun to Earth correct.

Presumably, this is because - as is traditional with Danny Boyle - it's about the interplay of characters facing suitably challenging circumstances. Of course quite why the big ol' bomb can't just be fired at the Sun sans crew is... well, that would be a much shorter and less dramatic film... Anyway, despite there being only eight members of the crew you'll be hard pressed to really get a feel for anyone except Mace - aka Johnny Storm - and Cillian Murphy - aka Scarecrow.

Naturally, things all start going horribly wrong after not too long and as with all of these "saving the world from disaster" type films, we have to see a lot of people struggling to sacrifice themselves first and naturally, they succeed. The film seemed to dally to some extent with the supernatural but really, that's more to do with human perception than anything else. That and the frequent shaky, epilepsy inducing fast cuts...

All-in-all, it's a passable waste of time... don't expect anything that will blow you away, change your perceptions of the world or make you wet your pants because this is a fairly by the numbers film. You never really - despite the fact it's mercilessly hammered home several times - get the sense that life is in the balance. Nor do you really feel for the character plight - they seem to follow the classic profile of most sci-fi crews... as soon as things go wrong and professionalism and not going mental are required... well you can guess. In fact, this film is probably what "The Core" would have been if it was set in space and not written by an imbecile. Of course, when the plot of the film is "restart the Sun WITH A REALLY BIG BOMB!" you're never going to be achieving new heights of excellence. Although, it DOES trump 300 in the no wins stakes... Think you're screwed fighting against a million Persians? Try being on a bomb the size of Manhattan accelerating toward the surface of the Sun!