Daylight

Not the greatest movie but also not bad. Lots of action by Stallone. Unrealistic as many action films are but entertaining enough. As an animal lover, I loved the dog addition and did not like the "s*** with legs" part. It's a little cheesy but watchable.

An accidental explosion rips through a tunnel beneath the Hudson river, sealing off both ends trapping the survivors inside. In steps Stallone, a disgraced former emergency services chief, who hopes to save the day in usual hero style.

Daylight has a good blend of interesting characters, suspense, drama, action and special effects that all add towards the entertainment of the movie.

Overall it's good fun to watch, and it does refrain from becoming silly or over-sentimental.

7/10

Geez, that cab driver sure knows a lot about rescue procedures. Hey, he's Sylvester Stallone! Sly plays Kit Latura, a disgraced EMS hotshot who was fired for a major men-killing mistake (even though he's still clearly the #1 guy in this particular line of work) and happens upon some major trouble. A couple of thieving imbeciles inadvertently cause an explosion in a tunnel under New York's Hudson River, trapping a multi-culti band of survivors between a rock and an impossible place. Latura volunteers to shimmy into the proverbial hell and lead the bedraggled few to---say it with me---'Daylight'. Would he have been as gung ho if he'd known he'd get so wet?

Label this one 'Die Hard' in a tunnel or 'The Po-Sly-don Adventure'. In fact, director Rob Cohen probably screened 'The Poseidon Adventure' a few times while prepping his film. That's my favourite of the absurd '70s catastrophe flicks and 'Daylight' strikes the same notes, often successfully. There's water and fire, rats and stereotypes, it's dank and dark, and you're never sure which mid-level movie star will die next. And credit where it's due, there's even plenty of pathos in the "we all gotta work together" vein and touching scenes of quiet humanity that stop an inch short of treacle. I was moved more than usual by a Stallone picture.

The movie made squat at the box office back in December '96, but it's worth a DVD rental for its solid craftsmanship. The F/X and sound design are money. As for the acting, the lead characters (Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen) aren't especially memorable, but some of the lower-billed performers (Stan Shaw & Colin Fox, to name two) escape the movie with some dignity. The only real villain is human idiocy---people go where they're not supposed to go and do things they're not supposed to do. 'Daylight' is formulaic, but it's still better than most disaster crap I've seen.

Stallone returned after a break from action movies to make "Daylight." Here he tried to make his character more three dimensional, a human with weaknesses and flaws rather than the mute and destruction minded heroes of some of his other movies.

Making Latura as a human was a good idea, and you get to like him, although the rest of the movie doesn't quite hold up it's end. It plays as some cross between the "Poseidon Adventure" and an Irwin Allen disaster film, with an uplifting musical score. You know pretty quickly who's going to live and die, and even though Latura is a mere mortal, only he can save those lives.

Still, "Daylight" makes a good diversion, and the "good guy really is a good guy" concept works for the most part.

In the 90's the disaster movie had a mini comeback for a couple of years, but being the 90's they all pretty much played out like action hero flicks.

Daylight had Stallone heading up the man muscle, which is one of the movies plus points, he is a master of stunt work and he spends most of the movie tackling the ultimate underground assault course.

The group of survivors have a handful of your usual stereotypes and it's pretty easy to spot the obvious, 'you'll be squashed later', characters, but there are still a few surprises for other cast members that don't make it.

The movie falls a bit flat with these characters though as although it's a pretty large ensemble, they're all very quickly introduced to get the action going early on and are hyper versions of themselves throughout.

That said the character mix works well to get the plot moving, the action sequences are great and there's enough plot to keep you entertained until the end.

Daylight is definitely at the top of the 90's disaster game, (it's certainly no awful Volcano), and it's worth a watch on Netflix, it's just to 90's in a bad way to make it a great movie.