The film adeptly employs some of the classic science-fiction tropes of old, such as oxygen privation, mysterious signals, and unexplained, violent occurrences, yet it still manages to be entirely, terrifyingly innovative. With the fate of the world at stake, an international cast from as far afield as Japan and Malaysia is ingenious, and one example of Sunshine's superiority over its larger-budget US counterparts. The thinly-sketched crew roles are one of the film’s weaknesses, but everything, from the effects to the script and the pacing, is done with such skill that we find ourselves rooting for them anyway.
Sunshine may not have the gleeful evil of Shallow Grave, or the crowd-pleasing tricks of the Slumdog Millionaire giant which eclipsed it a year later. Neither too does Cillian Murphy nor Chris Evans have the star power to solely carry it on their tinfoil-clad shoulders. What Sunshine does instead is leave a deep, lasting impact on you. This is partly because of the score; John Murphy’s stunning Adagio in D Minor, which makes the pivotal sequences all the more gut-wrenching, sticks in the mind far longer than any high-budget special effects. Sunshine’s deeper metaphysical questions, less ‘are we alone in the universe’ than ‘what are we to the universe?’ prove that the film has brains to match its high-concept, even as the third act descends a little too far into horror territory, with Murphy being pursued by a manic ex-crewmember (Mark Strong). His character's punishment perhaps, for daring to think that we are anything more than the third rock from the sun.
