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The key to appreciating Sunshine in its entirety is to pay close attention during early expositional scenes, especially discussions of theoretical physics in relation to what may happen as their craft gets closer to our favorite star. Bearing these exchanges in mind, and treating them as the foreshadowing that they are, it's not that surprising what direction the picture takes. It can be easy to miss the point of Sunshine by dismissing these early conversations and getting caught up in the more-easily digestible action sequences.

While the majority of critics gave Sunshine positive notices (the Rotten Tomatoes Top Critics Tomato Meter sits at 58%), many agreed with the accusations of third-act letdown: Claudia Puig, writing for the venerable USA Today, remarked that, "as the film ultimately deviates from its course, the filmmaking suffers." Richard Roeper called it an "ultimately disappointing futuristic mind game." It's not hard to tell where these notices came from, as I felt a similar disconnect to the last half-hour the first time I watched it: while Sunshine positions itself as hard science fiction early on, a number of extraordinarily entertaining set pieces make it easy to forget all that set up, marveling at the gloriously low-tech space suits, the fiery wrath that the sun can inflict on under-protected parts of the ship, and the intriguing mystery that goes along with the discovery of Icarus II. Then, when the pendulum swings back the other way, the film seems abruptly disconnected from its roots, adrift on a flight of fancy. Subsequent viewings, however, have shown - to me, anyway - Sunshine to be deviously well-plotted and uncompromising in its vision. That very lack of compromise probably led to the movie's less than stellar box office performance: even with its modest-for-an-ambitious-science-fiction-story budget of $50 million US, Sunshine's worldwide gross of about $30 million undoubtedly left disappointed investors in its wake.

That shouldn't long be the case, though, in my estimation. This type of picture - imbued with meaning, requiring multiple viewings to get the full effect - tends to thrive as a cult favorite, driven by positive word-of-mouth from those who get it. Sunshine is challenging, no doubt about it. It's also whip smart, wholeheartedly entertaining and creative. It's The Dark Knight of science fiction (not in terms of box office, of course, but for the shared characteristic of sneaking big, complicated ideas into a relatively crowd-pleasing package). Danny Boyle's gotten a lot of attention for films like Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, but his under-the-radar works like Millions, Shallow Grave, and Sunshine are the ones I expect to have the longest shelf life. He hit it out of the park with this one, we just haven't noticed yet.

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