Critics have been captivated by the special effects in British director Danny Boyle’s latest blockbuster, Sunshine, which follows the crew of a ship sent to kick-start our brightest star, with the aid of a nuclear payload the size of Manhattan.

You won’t be alone in thinking the plot sounds familiar, and comparisons have been made with Alien, Event Horizon, Solaris and even Star Trek. Jonathan Dean, in Total Film magazine, isn’t fazed . “So what if Sunshine borrows significantly from certain other space adventures? It’s better than [Event] Horizon and no one’s seen Solaris anyway.” For Dean, however, the film was too muddled. “Jumping from scenes of extreme radiance to bloody violence, from cosy chats to bleeding obvious waffle, Sunshine is a space opera of confused purpose. The stated subtext of science vs faith, and who we turn to in desperate peril, only stutters to life, while the global cooling of Alex Garland’s script risks irrelevance, locked out of a time that frets over global warming.”

Ben Walters in Time Out also felt there was “plenty [in Sunshine] that doesn’t quite satisfy”, but was ultimately seduced by the film's visual effects “It’s in the relationship between the crew and the Sun that Sunshine really shines. The star is a siren here, perilously captivating: when we first see psych officer Searle (Cliff Curtis), it takes a minute to realise that his perma-tanned, panda-eyed complexion is the result of too many hours on the observation deck. The awesome CG solar designs (by the Movie Picture Company) make this compulsion quite understandable, forging a powerful link between them and us – we too sit gazing at the playing light, fascinated and at its mercy.”

Equally star-struck was Olly Richards, writing in Empire, who described Sunshine as ‘utterly breathtaking to behold’. Special effects have always been critical factor in the Sci Fi genre, and Richards thinks Sunshine certainly punches above its weight. “[Boyle has] taken a budget of around $40 million and produced a film of near faultless visual gloss and shimmery sophistication, with production values that appear well outside his price range. It’s the equivalent of taking a few old toilet rolls, some fuzzy Sellotape and belly-button lint and producing the Mona Lisa. But with more flames and less enigmatic smirking. It’s impossible to see where reality ends and computer begins and, as it was our understanding that fire was one of the last great CG hurdles, we can consider that one clearly leapt.”

BACKGROUND

• Sunshine

• Full of bright ideas

• Sunshine on my mind

• Sex in space? Not in Sunshine

Byrne as hot as the sun

From a bit-part in Star Wars to the lead in a Danny Boyle space epic, Rose Byrne is on a stellar ride, says Kevin Maher

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

And it’s pretty handy that it looks good, because for the first hour at least, you’ll barely get a chance to blink. “Sunshine starts with rocket-like velocity”, warns Richards, and in the first hour ‘breaks for urination will not be an option’. Certainly a warning to all the people out there who finish their popcorn and coke by the end of the adverts. “There’s no time for pre-take-off preamble or significant character work…There are people to be slain and minds to be boggled and not a great deal of time in which to do it.

Sight and Sound's Henry K. Miller was thrilled by Alex Garland's script, “which consistently pits the viewer’s desire to see the crew of Icarus II survive against the crew’s own determination to complete their mission”. Without wanting to spoil the ending, “the death of everyone on board is more or less inevitable from the get-go”, says Miller, “and as the film reaches its climax all dramatic choices boil down to the need to reach the target, every chance of survival or escape ruled out by the depletion of the ship’s oxygen supplies. Throughout, Boyle and ace Director of Photographer Alwin Küchler exploit elemental contrasts of darkness and light, heat and cold, with the CGI and model work beautiful by mostly unobtrusive until the radically disorientating final scenes. As Pinbacker fighter Capa and Cassie aboard the tumbling payload, Boyle throws out temporal and spatial continuity – as well as a certain degree of comprehensibility – in a genuinely breathtaking sequence that combines visceral terror with Kubrickian wonder.”

These final scenes didn't have the same effect on Ian Nathan, writing on the BBC’s Sunshine microsite . He didn't quite see the Kubrickian wonder and thought that, while Sunshine was ‘gripping’, it's last scene actually scuppered any chances Boyle's film had of entering into the sci-fi hall of fame. “The idea is to send you out perplexed, but chattering over possible solutions, but the salty authenticity that made it so rich is lost in space, and a superb Sci-fi movie becomes merely a very decent one.”

Finally, to the question of the science behind the story. Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland argue it is all plausible, if not necessarily possible, but Anjana Ahuja, The Times’ resident science boffin, wasn’t convinced. “Danny Boyle could have achieved the same level of scientific fidelity in Sunshine by giving a calculator to a schoolboy”, she claims. And other thoughts that distracted Ahuja? “The psychology of extended space travel is covered well, although we could have done with a space bonk (Nasa is confronting the issue of sex in space).”

“We tried to put sex in, believe me!” Director Danny Boyle argued in an interview with Charlotte O’Sulivan in the Evening Standard. “We had a great scene planning between Capa and Cassie. In the oxygen room. It would have looked great. But no, sex in space just doesn’t work.” It seems there are some things even CGI can’t help with.

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010