1h 47m
Director: Danny Boyle

Simple premise, re-ignite the sun before it dies and kills all life on earth.

Our sun is dying, the crew of the second attempt to deliver an explosive payload to our star is distracted when they detect the space ship from the first mission and investigate.

The crew of the Icarus 2 space ship in this movie are depicted very much like they are in Alien, you know like blue collar workers, approachable and down to earth.

One of the great things about this film is that they spend a bit of time illustrating how unforgiving the environment of space is, the proximity to our star really ups the stakes. When things start to go wrong, events occur which would logically happen in space and for scientific reasons which you'll appreciate if you like your sci-fi to feel realistic.

The writers actually bother to give good motives to the crew for their possibly tragic diversion to investigate the other ship which adds realism.

Now I've talked about the environment, you can appreciate how much more tension there is when they set a psychotic killer loose on the ship, it gets fairly intense before the end. It ends up having a bit of an Alien vibe with an unquantified villain roaming around the ship picking off the crew members whilst the approach to the sun plays as a ticking clock in the background.

The killer is intent on sabotaging the mission and the crew are determined to succeed and Danny Boyle makes the most of that, so the tension is palpable and builds to a white knuckle crescendo.

There's a lot of superb visuals in this movie and everything feels realistic, you never get taken out of the illusion by any jarring effects which is rare for a space flick.

You might recognise young Cillian Murphy from Peaky Blinders and Michelle Yeoh really needs no introduction after she played a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and more recently Everything, Everywhere All At Once (2022). Mark Strong always does a good baddie and it's all directed by Danny Boyle who did Trainspotting (1996) so you know you're in good hands.

The cinematographer (Alwin H. Küchler) really seems to know what he's doing and everything is well framed with shots which feel appropriate to each scene. If it's a tight space for example you're left feeling slightly claustrophobic.

There's a few subliminal frames in this film so epilepsy warning in case flashing frames bother you!

It's a slick presentation with all of the constituent parts coming together to take you on a sometimes intense space adventure which I think is a bit of an overlooked masterpiece (probably because of the slightly disturbing ending!).

"If you wake up one morning and it's a particularly beautiful day, you'll know we made it..."



Trailer: