Oppenheimer (5/5 Stars)

 

Seemingly every week we are treated to spectacles: ordinary people with superpowers, vehicles with impossible functions, events that can never happen. Oppenheimer may be the only movie confined to historical fact that gets close to all the extraordinary nonsense continually thrown at us. In 1945 a group of American scientists split the smallest thing known to man, an atom, and created the largest explosion the strength of 25 kilotons of TNT. Human beings had unlocked an unseen but potent energy in the universe and had harnessed for themselves the primal powers of the sun, nuclear fission. A month later, those same humans, specifically Americans, dropped two of these bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a bid to end the largest war human beings had ever conducted against each other. It worked. The war was over, but an unease settled upon those responsible. After all, this wasn’t magic, it was science. Anyone could do it. And someday they would. And they could build an even bigger bomb using nuclear fusion. Then instead of killing 70,000 people in an instant like the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, millions could die with one hydrogen bomb over New York or Moscow. The Project Head, Robert J. Oppenheimer would later describe his reaction upon seeing his experiment work that very early morning of July 16, 1945. He thought of an ancient sacred Indian text in which the deity Vishnu reveals himself in his sacred multi-armed form and states, “Now I am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

‘Oppenheimer”, Writer/Director Christopher Nolan’s latest movie is a story of two rooms and a flashback. The first room takes place in 1954 where Oppenheimer is appealing a decision of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to not renew his security clearance. The second room takes place in 1959 where Lewis Strauss is seeking to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce. In both rooms, the subject of testimony and cross-examination is the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), which is shown in the flashback from his school days through the The Manhattan Project, which culminated in the Trinity Test, the first successful testing of an atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Having a cursory knowledge of American history I knew about The Manhattan Project and the Trinity Test. I did not know that Oppenheimer was denied a renewal of his security clearance less than a decade later because of suspected ties with communism. As for Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.), I had never heard of him before and you probably haven’t heard of him either. Though his senate confirmation hearing pales in importance to everything else in the movie, it is itself a remarkable and curious moment in American history. A president’s appointments to his own cabinet are almost never contested, let alone denied. Before Strauss was rejected it had only happened once in the past 100 years.

This movie is based on the book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. As with all material based on real life, the challenge is not in the creation but in the editing. (My favorite metaphor is that fiction is like painting, documentary is sculpture). Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of this book and the editing of the movie is a marvel in organization. The movie is long but moves quickly. The cast is enormous, but characters are efficiently and memorably introduced. The movie switches between time periods and locations, but the viewer is never confused as to when and where they are. Nolan affects this by shooting the 1954 room and the Oppenheimer flashback in color, whereas the 1959 room and Strauss flashback are in black and white. Nolan even organized enough room for a twist in the plot, not an easy thing to do in a biopic.

Then there is the IMAX. I saw this movie in June in a normal movie theater and was compelled to see it at the Lincoln Center IMAX in September. It will be a good movie no matter how you see it, but you really should see it on the largest screen possible. Nolan uses the IMAX expertly, saving it for close ups of the quantum world, very large explosions, and expansive landscapes. It would not be incorrect to categorize Oppenheimer as a tentpole summer blockbuster. It is a BIG movie with lots of Stars. (This would be an indispensable movie for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon games. In just one example of many, Gary Oldman shows up as President Truman in a great “the buck stops here” scene). It also happens to be very good in the classic sense. The subject matter is compelling and morally complicated. It is rare that you see these two things together. Rare movies like Apocalypse Now and Citizen Kane come to mind.

Christopher Nolan has been a very good director for more than two decades. He is old enough to be a stubborn proponent of obsolete technology preferring shooting his movies with film cameras as opposed to digital cameras. He is also British and makes movies about billionaires, space, and World War II. He then could be characterized as a conservative filmmaker. But, this has never been the case, and continues not to be true. There are several instances of radical choices, for instance, In the first room, Oppenheimer is cross-examined as to adultery. One not only marvels at the presence of nudity in that particular setting but also how well it works. Nolan continues to be an expert on how to use time in his storytelling. The idea of splitting the movie into two rooms in the 1950s and a flashback that generally moves forward from Oppenheimer’s school days to the present and into the future past the two rooms (there are a few scenes in the 1960s) may not seem all that impressive until one considers how the movie would work if it was entirely linear. If the storytelling was linear, the movie would be ten hours long and irretrievably boring after the third hour when the bomb goes off.

About halfway through the movie, Nolan drops the two rooms and tells the story of the Trinity Test for an uninterrupted 30-40 minutes. Here are the most fascinating scenes in the movie. In particular, it is of continual concern to the scientists that the project is justified, after all, as one scientist points out, a bomb falls on both the just and unjust. The only reason why they feel compelled to build a bomb in the first place is because they do not want the Nazis to get there first. Then right before the bomb is built, Hitler kills himself in his bunker and Germany surrenders. There is a scene in which the scientists argue as to whether they should continue. Oppenheimer argues that the science will always be there, that people won’t understand it until they use it, and once they’ve used it, the horror of that understanding will usher in world peace since war will become unthinkable. (I will speculate that there is a much simpler reason why they continued. The scientists wanted to see if it would work.) Then once the bomb is built, Oppenheimer attends a meeting of the U.S. Military brass and they discuss whether and how they will drop the bomb on the Japanese. In one of those “you can’t make this up” moments from history, one of the potential target cities, Kyoto, is struck from the list because of its cultural significance and also because the general in charge of the list honeymooned there.

I am compelled here to note that science, capitalism, and democracy, those things that are the foundation of America as an idea, do not provide strength because they are right. Not all scientific experiments are successful. Capitalism doesn't always provide correct values. Not all democratically elected leaders are good at their jobs. The strength in these three things is that they are processes, not end results. And what they do is that they can be used to point out something that is wrong. The experiment fails, the stock market crashes, the politician is marred by scandal. And just as importantly, once this something that is wrong becomes apparent, the participants have the opportunity to self-correct. You can change the experiment or change your theory, you can create regulations (or remove barriers) to improve market conditions, you can vote out politicians that have proven themselves incompetent.

Before, during, and after the bombs were created and dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the participants questioned whether what they were doing the right thing. This movie shows those arguments. It isn’t sure whether the bombs should have been created. It isn't sure whether the bombs should have been dropped. Moving forward, Oppenheimer acts to dissuade the U.S. Government from building the larger more destructive hydrogen bomb. Does that make Oppenheimer a hypocrite? No, it makes him a scientist. The enemies of the Open Society will look at this movie and see only weakness. They believe that history is a story told by the winners and that there is no truth but what power dictates. America won World War II. It won it unconditionally. Does this movie feel like a story told by winners? No, it doesn’t, and that is because we aren’t Nazis or Communists. We are allowed to second guess ourselves. To see the benefit of this openness, just imagine if it was the other way around and Hitler had gotten there first. Then this movie would be a propaganda reel with nothing but admiration of the creators and demonization of the victims. It was a good thing for humanity that America got to the bomb first.

Dunkirk (4/5 Stars)

 “Dunkirk” recreates of an early event in World War II when the German blitzkrieg flanked and encircled the entire British army at the beaches of Dunkirk while the German Luftwaffe bombed them from above and German U-Boats terrorized the British channel.

It is entirely possible that the large majority of the British army, around 400,000 men, may have died on that beach. The British navy was not sending the bulk of their destroyers to evacuate the men because of the superiority of the German air force and submarine fleet. The last and only hope was to draft all the “little ships” of the England, civilian boats, to cross the channel and pick up the boys. As a retreat it was so successful it became the stuff of legend. Only 40,000 men were expected to live. The British with the help of the civilian effort rescued ten times that amount and a good amount of the French army too.

Writer and Director Christopher Nolan treats the subject matter with solemnity and reverence. Individual stories are sacrificed to the events as a whole. (In fact, I can’t remember most of the names of the characters.) There is no back-story and no locations that are not on Dunkirk, therefore no characters that aren’t on-the-ground soldiers. This minimalism suits the sense of isolation and the impending doom felt by the men on the beach.

What is innovative is the structure of the story. Here, again, Director Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar) engages his forte. The movie is divided into three parts and seamlessly switches between the three. The first is the Mole (french word for pier thing on the beach) and takes place over a week and covers the entire week that the evacuation took place in. The second is the Sea and takes place over a single day that the little ships were involved in the evacuation. The third is the Air and takes place over a single hour that the British Air Force provided a cover mission for the evacuation. The Air’s hour takes place during the Sea’s day which takes place during the Mole’s week. It is not necessarily intuitive that these stories could seamlessly move back and forth between each other, but Nolan once again proves that he knows how to clearly tell a seemingly convoluted story. I was not particularly confused as to what was happening when.

And it makes sense story-wise. If Nolan had told the story straight chronologically, the second and especially the third story-line would have been sandwiched unfairly near the end, thereby reducing the historical importance of the sea and air efforts. This way, they are all given equal time (even though the their times are unequal) and the movie has this interesting relativistic effect. The faster the characters move, the slower time seems to move for them, and an hour in a British Spitfire roaring across the channel equals the time spent by a man walking on the ground.

Most of the actors, though talented like Tom Hardy (airplane) and Cillian Murphy (ground), could have been replaced because of the deliberate motive of the movie to have the scenario overpower any one individual story. There is one exception and that is the civilian captain of one of the little ships, played by Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). The nobility of the man shines through and gives incarnate form to the humble and collective spirit of Dunkirk that became the stuff of legend. His interactions with a shell-shocked soldier (Cillian Murphy) provide the heart of the movie. “There’s no turning back from this, son,” he states and there is a power in the understated yet unwavering purpose behind his intonations. Keep Calm and Carry On indeed.

TRON: Legacy (3/5 Stars)

If Sam doesn’t care why should I?

Tron is above all other things a visually stunning movie. The artists behind this movie have created an entire new universe stacked with digital skyscrapers, innovative sports arenas, and fantastical vehicles. Clearly, a lot of love, thought, and money went into the design of this movie. The huge problem is that nobody in the movie notices it. The characters walk around nonplussed and unimpressed with their surroundings and that unenthusiasm trickles right through to the audience. If the people in the story don’t care, why should we?

TRON: Legacy has been put in the hands of a first time director named Joseph Kosinski. It brings back Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff Bridges, from the original movie (which I haven’t seen) and also introduces his son Sam Flynn, played by Garrett Hedlund. The story setup is thus: Kevin Flynn is a game designer working on something big that will change everything about technology, philosophy, and theology. It will ‘change the world,’ he tells his nine year old son as leaves the house to make the latest breakthrough at the office. He never comes back. Twenty-one years later, Sam Flynn is all grown up and living the life of the down-to-earth very rich. His apartment is made out of storage containers but is located on the riverfront and has an awesome view. He also has really cool gadgets and a great bike but this is balanced out by having a cute dog. And even though he apparently doesn’t have a job nor has worked a day in his life, that doesn’t mean he’s not smart or ambitious. He’s just not a fan of the big bad corporate men who have taken over his father’s company. So he’s biding his time till I don’t know, he steps into his father’s shoes and “changes the world,” or something.

That is until his godfather gets a page from his father Kevin, asking him to go down to the shop. So after the usual protest that he doesn’t want to, he goes to the office, quickly finds the secret passageway behind the TRON video game, accidentally activates a computer thingamajig, and is warped/digitally rendered into the confines of an infinite universe contained in a computer chip. The universe is bathed in a cool digital blue, everything seems to run on tracks, and you kind of have to see it to sort of get it (see above trailer). Almost immediately he is picked up by this weird “m” shaped ship full of dangerous red robots. They take him straight to a sports arena where he is forced to duel to the death other robots with Killer Frisbees. 

Sam takes all of this remarkably in stride. I wouldn’t say Garrett is a bad actor because he is not much different than your ordinary absurdly stoic male action star. Extraordinary things only slightly perturb him from time to time. (If the above had happened to me, my reaction would be probably be along the lines of: “OMG What the Hell Is Going ON? What is this Place! Don’t kill me! AAHHH!!!” or something like that.) And yes he has never seen a Killer Frisbee before but that doesn’t mean he isn’t confident that he is better at the sport than robots supposedly programmed to know what they are doing.

After several games, which look like they should be much more dangerous than they actually are, Sam is rescued by a beautiful mystery girl, played by Olivia Wilde, who takes him “off the grid” to his long-lost father’s secret lair. There he meets his Dad for the first time in twenty years and is mercifully allowed by the writers of the movie to have a single tear run down his cheek. They don’t have much to say to each other though. Over a dinner of weird digital food filled with awkward pauses, the father finally asks, “I would guess that you have many questions?” To which Sam responds, “I only have one.” And then I finally had to laugh because the situation had gotten too absurd. Here’s a list of questions that I would have asked: Ahem, What the fuck is this place? How did you build it? How long did it take you to build it? What did you use to build it with? Who designed all of it? Who was the weird evil guy that looked like you? Why have you aged and he hasn’t? How does a stick turn into a motorcycle? Why can’t the motorcycles go ‘off the grid?’ What would happen to if I met with a Killer Frisbee? Do these robots have feelings or personalities? How did they get those personalities? And of course the most glaringly obvious question of all: Who the hell is the girl sitting at this table eating dinner with us? Earlier she had taken Sam on a tour of the lair and showed him the library. She especially likes Jules Verne. Okay, so she just saved your life, is smoking hot, AND she reads books. Now would be the perfect time to ask if she’s a robot. The question Sam asks instead is, “Why didn’t you come home that night?” That’s an okay question I guess, but seriously, is that really the only one? This kid is severely lacking in the area of imagination.

Some of those questions are eventually answered but only until the movie’s second half, and that is where things slow down considerably. Or that they ramp up. Or both in the sense that the movie’s stakes ramp up, but are so off-the-wall that it bored me considerably. In this movie, we are presented with an evil twin villain named CLUE who at one point goes so far as to hold a Nazi-style mass rally. What exactly is he planning to do? Invade the real world and take it over maybe, although how is never explained. Should anyone be worried? Given CLUE’s utter incompetence in using his army of baddies to stop three good guys, not really. Let me make a little contrast here. Last week I saw “Jackass 3D.” In that movie there was a segment called “TeeBall” where Ryan Dunn hits a TeeBall stand that then twirls around and strikes Steve-O in the balls. That segment was more effective than most of the drama in “TRON.” I can definitively say that I know what getting hit in the balls is all about. I haven’t a clue what’s going on here. My point is that it is better to have a villain that does little things that make sense than one who does big things in some vague pseudo-alarming way. If you’re going to make an epic about genocide and world domination, you better know enough about the subject to allow the audience to take it seriously. Otherwise it’s exactly what it is: Hollow and Absurd. And if the movie is like that, all those quiet melodramatic scenes where the actors talk seriously about their feelings just don’t work and take forever. What this movie should have done is gotten rid of the whole “Hitler” thing and just had the stakes tied to the games in the arena. Have a tournament or something with the ultimate prize being a father-son-hot girl ticket home to reality. The heavy drama would be gone, the action would still be packed, and the story would much more effective because it made sense.

This movie looks like it cost a hell of a lot of money to make. There’s nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong however in putting little to no effort into the dialogue or the characters. Jeff Bridges seems to be improvising lines from the Big Lebowski. Garret Hedlund is blank slate. Olivia Wilde looks great but doesn’t do much else. CLUE is creeping around the uncanny valley. The only actor that seems to be enjoying himself is Michael Sheen. I was tempted to wonder why a robot would be British and gay but overall I’m just glad he was there. Too bad he’s the last character introduced and the first one killed off.  And for some reason Cillian Murphy, one of the most accomplished actors of the cast, was hired for only one scene. Perhaps thirty years from now somebody will finally get this story right.

Inception (5/5 Stars) July 20, 2010

A movie of immense ambition perfectly realized

I recall a scene from Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Being John Malkovich’ where the title character starts crawling into the portal that will lead into his own head. Another character looks on and remarks, “What happens when a man goes through his own portal?” It was a very good question, particularly because at that point in movie history it had never happened before. There was no genre outline for what was supposed to happen. The movie had defied genre and boldly stepped into the realm of the truly original. I remember the sense of suspense and wonder that came from watching that particular scene. Where will this movie go? What will I see? What is going to happen next!? Now take the suspense and wonder from that one scene in ‘Being John Malkovich’ and prolong it for an entire movie and you will get a sense of what it feels like to watch “Inception,” the new movie by Director Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo Dicaprio. It is an experience that must have accompanied the people who first saw such movies as “Apocalypse Now” or “Citizen Kane.” It is an experience that occurs only when a movie reaches for that zenith of Ambition and realizes it perfectly. I don’t have to see any more movies this year to say that “Inception” will be the best one. It is quite possibly one of the best movies ever made. 

Now let me think, what was the movie about? It was very vivid when I first watched it. It would be best if I saw it twice but I will take a crack at describing it anyway. Right now there is a unique form of Corporate Espionage called ‘Extraction.’ A group of specialized corporate thieves drug a person, invade his subconscious through his dreams, and steal an idea. It’s a bit complicated. One person, usually the architect, is the actual dreamer. They create and control the dream world. The others involved in the heist and the actual victim are voyeurs in the dream and their subconscious fill in the blanks and details of the dreamer’s world. There are several dream rules that you may remember from your own experiences. Some of them include: You can never remember how a dream started. The dream is especially realistic because when a dreamer is dreaming they can’t tell that they are in a dream. You can escape the dream by dying or falling but ordinary pain won’t wake you up. The time in a dream is prolonged because of the amount of brainpower you exert. For example, ten seconds in the real world is a minute in a dream. Most interesting is the concept of a dream within a dream where all the previous rules apply but even more so.

But alas there is just too much to explain for a dinky little review. I can only say this: that the enormous amount of exposition was always exceedingly interesting to learn and exhilarating to watch. Most importantly, it made sense. Writer/Director Christopher is a master storyteller in that sense. Recall what he taught us in “Memento,” about memory and what he taught us in “The Prestige,” about magic. Both had convoluted plots but we always understood what was going on and why. In this movie he teaches us with the same skill about Dreams. But that’s not all. In this movie, the intellectual exercise is just half the equation. Let’s not forget that Christopher Nolan is also the man who gave us “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” Those were both great big summer blockbusters with incredible action sequences. “Inception” is the successful combination of Nolan’s two disparate talents: Intellectualism and Spectacle. Oh and what a powerful fusion of imagination it is! The thing about Dreams you know is that they are bound only by imagination. Thus huge special effects sequences fit right into the story seamlessly. They never feel forced. In fact, these action sequences will make you think even more about what is happening. This is best combination of smarts and physicality since “The Matrix.” It’s like Charlie Kaufman wrote a James Bond script. One of the best scenes has Joseph Gordon Levitt involved in a fistfight in a hotel lobby where the laws of gravity keep on shifting. Wow! No, I don’t have the space to explain why, but it was awesome! If Christopher Nolan doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Director this year then the Academy has a hole in its head. 

Wait, I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning. Leonardo Dicaprio is the leader of the group also known as the Extractor. His long time associate is played by Joseph Gordan Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, (500) Days of Summer). He is the Point Man. These two are approached by a very powerful corporate man played by Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai). He is the Tourist. Watanabe wants Dicaprio not to steal an idea from a corporate rival played by Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins) but to give that man an idea. This is known as “Inception.” If you thought Extraction, something that you had never heard of before was hard to pull off, Inception is twice as tough to accomplish. Too succeed in this mission Dicaprio hires Dileep Rao (Avatar, Drag Me to Hell). He is the Chemist and will provide the hardcore sedatives to lull everyone into a 10-hour deep sleep on a plane flight across the Pacific. Dicaprio also hires Tom Hardy, a man who specializes in shape-shifting. Within dreams he can impersonate friends, enemies, and beautiful women. He is the Shade. Then Dicaprio visits his father, played by Michael Caine, and asks for his most brilliant student. This turns out to be Ellen Page (Juno). She is the Architect. The Chemist will drug everyone. The Architect will design the Dream Space. The Shade will trick the corporate rival. The Tourist will provide backup. The Point Man gets to beat up bad guys in gravity changing hallways. The Extractor will plant the idea. 

I should also mention that the Extractor has something dark buried in his subconscious. It is the vision of his wife who used to be a part of his team. She is played by Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose). Since the Extractor’s relationship with his wife ended somewhat violently, his vision of her in his subconscious is quite a dangerous thing. Let’s just say she tries very hard to wake everybody up (i.e. she has a habit of killing people). 

By the way, I have only described the setup to the heist itself. So everything I just told you about is exposition. When we get into the heist, which plays out on several levels of dreams within dreams, then it gets really really interesting. I won’t give any spoilers because you wouldn’t be able to understand them anyway. It would be impossible to understand what happens in the second hour until you have actually watched the first. There is no way to jump into the middle here. Every single minute of the 2 hours and 40 minute movie is important. (By the way, those two hours and forty minutes seemed like a half hour watching this movie. I couldn’t have been more entranced.)

I think it is fair to say that Leonardo Dicaprio has the best agent in the world. He has done nothing but superior movies for about a decade now. (Shutter Island, Revolutionary Road, The Departed, Blood Diamond, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Catch Me if you Can). When you think about it, he also has an odd habit of picking roles that involve doomed romances. For instance have you noticed how many times his love interest has died/gone crazy (Inception, Shutter Island, Revolutionary Road) or that he’s died/gone crazy (Titanic, The Aviator, The Departed) or they both have died/gone crazy (Romeo & Juliet, Shutter Island). Then there are also instances where he just dies (The Quick and the Dead, Blood Diamond) or the love simply goes unrequited (Catch Me if You Can, Body of Lies, This Boy’s Life). I think his most successful romance was with Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York and I can’t really even remember if that relationship was ever consummated. He plays J. Edgar Hoover in his next movie, a closeted homosexual who openly despised gay people. Hoover did have a long-term relationship with another FBI man though. It seems hard to believe that a story about Hoover just might be Dicaprio’s most successful romance, but it might have that potential. With Dicaprio’s fine performances in two movies this year I believe he should be a front-runner for a Best Actor Oscar. If I had to choose which movie to nominate him for, it would be Shutter Island, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t also do a great job here. 

If I had to choose a performance I thought looked like the most fun though it would have to be Joseph Gordan Levitt’s. His fight in the hallway was just ridiculous. Also I had a blast in the scene where Ellen Page realizes an entire city landscape is at the whim of her imagination and starts rearranging the physics of it. What can I say, this movie is special. A freight train runs through a city street without the aid of railroad tracks. Yes it makes sense. Go ahead and take a leap of faith with a master storyteller.

A final note on the ending of the movie, which I believe was about one second to short. I believe that it would have toppled. I say this because I would be extraordinarily confused if it didn't. Right now, I am certain that it was wrong of Nolan to end the movie on an ambiguous note at all. To think he diligently led us all that way only to cut us off at the last moment is decidedly uncool. Of course, I remember being underwhelmed by the endings of both "Memento" and "The Prestige" when I first saw them also. But After watching both those movies again, I became much more accepting of what Nolan was trying to teach me. That's normal. When a movie introduces a new way of thinking about something (whether it be memory, magic, or dreams) it is hard to accept the new thought process right away. I know it is quite possible that "Inception" will be an even better movie the second time around. I'll add to this review my thoughts about the ending as soon as I get to see it a second time.

Sunshine 08/04/07

Sunshine is one of the those movies that I wish could have given me more. Here it was teetering on the edge of something of a masterpiece. The visuals are magnificent and the characters are colorful and well drawn (and work heroically without makeup). The science is intelligent and correct. 
The big letdown is the bad guy. He's the crazed captain of Icarus I, the first spaceship that didn't make it, a man named Pinpacker I believe. He's covered with sores after being exposed to too much sun and believes that God that doomed mankind by extinguishing the sun so mankind shouldn't try to reignite it. The only problem with this is that Pinpacker is not a real character. The movie provides no explanation on why a captain would go insane and why his crew would not fight back, or how a man with such limited sanity could be put in charge of the most important mission on in the Solar System. It's somewhat unbelievable and it seems to me that he is more a plot device than an actual character. 
The makers of this movie seem to be really searcing for a plot in order to showcase the special effects, not the other way around. Therefore we get the Earth's smartest engineer making a really stupid decision so the movie can jumpstart the domino sequence of disasters. But that's not enough, because the story has written in very smart characters who can solve these huge problems. That's when the psychotic bad guy comes in handy. He makes sure that the glorious disasters keep coming and coming. 
This movie, in the superior way it was made, reminds one more of classic sci-fi movies than those stupid B-movies found late night on the Sci Fi channel. Movies like 2001:A Space Odyssey and the Alien franchise. The details are the same. The characters look smarter than sexy (even the women). They don't wear makeup and speak convincing scientific possibilities. But in A Space Odyssey it was the computer that went mad. In Alien it was a killer extra-terristrial plus an android. The movie Sunshine, unlike those classics, lacks a true villain, and I think it's mostly because the villain, this time, is a human religious fanatic. The computers, androids, and killer aliens were memorable and scary because they used logic, reason, and instinct to go around killing people. They fit into a perfect science fiction mold. Religious fanatics, bless their souls, do not fit comfortably into a science fiction movie. Keep in mind that good science fiction is based on science fact. Logic, reason, and instinct work. God on the other hand is more spiritual than anything. He does not, bless his soul, fit into the perfect science fiction fold. The crazed fanatic doesn't make any sense. It's not logical. 
No offense, but in space, in the far out future, in a solar winter, in a state of the art spaceship, commandeered by a group of specialists and scientists, God simply does not fit in.