It's the year 2057. The sun is dying and mankind will die out unless Earth can do something about it. Mankind puts its faith in a spaceship Icarus II which will take a crew of eight men and women on a journey to the sun to deliver a nuclear bomb designed to reignite the core of the sun.

A cross between 2001 and Alien, Sunshine is a sci-fi thriller which clearly shows how inspired the production team were, by both of those films.

Sunshine is fine for two thirds of its length. It sets up its mission with assurance, there are some superb visuals, and although you don't get to know the characters with any great depth, there is enough sense of realism in writer Alex Garland's script to make the film gripping. The crew are fascinated (as we are) by the sun as they draw closer to it and are enraptured by the wonderment of it.

Sadly, the film doesn't live up to its promise in the final third, being far too derivative of other films in this genre. There was an opportunity here for Danny Boyle to come up with something original that would satisfy audiences in the suspense stakes - plenty of ways that the fate of Icarus II could have hung in the balance or produced a differing outcome from one that here becomes all too predictable.