Chris Evans: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked
3. Mace - Sunshine (2007)
For their second collaboration, director Danny Boyle and novelist-turned-screenwriter Alex Garland made Sunshine, a sci-fi thriller in the Solaris vein.
The plot concerns a team of scientists who are sent on a dangerous mission to "reignite the sun" in the not-too-distant future, after it begins to die and life on Earth is threatened with extinction. The first two thirds of the film are masterful; the last act... well, it all goes a little crazy, but - for the most part - this is a stunning stuff.
Chris Evans isn't the lead in the movie, nor does he have a particularly large role. As Mace, the engineer, he plays second fiddle to Cillian Murphy's physicist hero Robert Capa, and the two characters find themselves at odds throughout. This is Evans at his most understated, and yet he's riveting to watch in the wake of the countless hyped-up performances he'd committed to at this point in his career.
It's easy to see why this is the actor's favourite of his own films; creating a cool, interesting character in the background, he quietly steals the entire movie.