Daylight (1996)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Stan Shaw, Angela from Boy Meets World, and Sage Stallone
Grade: C+

It’s cool seeing Sylvester Stallone in a disaster movie, but it seemed like nothing in Daylight matched his energy, minus the action of course.

Summary

In New York, a waste management firm makes a deal to load up a bunch of barrels of toxic waste onto trucks to get them to New Jersey by 11PM.

Next, we get a glimpse of the group of people we’ll be dealing with over the course of the film. We see transit cop George (Shaw) talk to his girlfriend Grace (Vanessa Bell Calloway) via walkie talkie. George works in the tunnel and Grace is back at the office where she works as a tunnel operations dispatcher. She can see him on the monitor as he speaks into his walkie talkie looking directly at the camera in the tunnel, saying he will return her bracelet when he sees her tonight and he’ll have something to tell her when he does. Next, we see Madelyne (Brenneman), a failing playwright getting home to see another rejection letter on her submission. After hearing some horrible voicemails and dealing with her rat/cockroach-infested apartment, we jump to Roy Nord (Mortensen). Nord is a celebrity of sorts that is the star of an ad campaign for a sportswear company. He’s in a boardroom meeting and they talk about declining sales, so they all agree to run an ad during the Super Bowl. Following this, he leaves with his driver because he has to be somewhere. They decide to take the tunnel. Older couple Roger (Colin Fox) and Eleanor Trilling (Claire Bloom) walk their dog and talk. After this, we see four younger prisoners (with one of them being Trina McGee-Davis and another being Sylvester Stallone’s real-life son Sage) being transported in one of those small prison buses. Finally, we see Kit Latura (Stallone). Latura is currently a cab driver, and he’s given a $50 tip to somehow stop in St. Vincent before they get to Newark by some doctor couple that are clearly in a hurry.

In addition, we are introduced to a dysfunctional family on their way to a family vacation, with the father having previously left his wife but recently coming back to her. Though everything seems to be fine between the husband and wife, the daughter will not forget it and lets them know about it.

Some jewel thieves steal some guy’s car and are immediately chased by cops because of some elaborate security system installed in it. Back in the control room, Grace’s superior, Norman (Barry Newman), greets everyone. Back on the street, the group that stole the car drives straight into the tunnel to New Jersey. As we see everyone in the control room spring into action because these guys are bumping into everyone, we see all the characters start driving into the tunnel, even Madelyne who has finally decided to move out of New York. Soon after, the bad guys crash directly into the trucks containing the toxic waste at full speed, triggering a massive explosion that consumes the inside of the tunnel and causing destruction to the foundation of it. The stone from the top of it falls and blocks the entrance. Having seen the explosion, Kit Latura springs into action right away and saves some guy from burning alive. He then sends his doctor passengers in a direction to help some people. After he helps some other guy, an EMS (Emergency Medical Services) worker recognizes him and goes over to talk because Latura is actually a former EMS chief. The EMS worker says that the New Jersey side of the tunnel is sealed up tight and the new chief is headed towards the mid-river passage. Latura leaves to go after him. As Grace tries to reach George and not being able to get through, we see the aftermath of the tunnel, with George trying to give a status report of what’s going on. However, he’s not getting a signal either.

Latura jumps onto an emergency vehicle heading to the other side of the tunnel and gets off to talk to the chief. Latura suggests right away to blow the tunnel shut to buy some time because it worked in a terrorist hypothetical his crew ran in 1994. It would help seal the survivors away from the fumes. The chief refuses and his co-worker Frank (Hedaya) tries to stop Latura because there’s a reason he doesn’t work there anymore. Latura insists they will die if they head through the mid-river passage, but they all tell Latura to fuck off basically. It’s then announced they’re evacuating the open side of the tunnel and sending everyone back to New Jersey, just as Latura starts to run in that direction after a conversation with Frank. The chief starts his expedition into the mid-river passage but almost immediately after, he gets crushed and dies. On the closed side of the tunnel, George meets the dysfunctional family and tells them to stay so he can try to find others who are still alive, leading him to Roy Nord. He tells Nord that the passage to the south tunnel is the only known way out, but it collapsed. Despite this, Nord grabs his hiking gear and insists on taking a look himself. After this, George finds the old couple and their dog. Madelyne breaks into the prison bus to save the younger group. She even uses her rubber boots to stop a wild electrical wire from killing her and the last guy to leave the overturned bus. As George screams into the broken cameras for Grace to cut the power, Latura shows up at the control room just in time to let everyone know someone is visibly screaming on the monitors.

Grace is somehow able to decipher what George is saying, even though he mimed the situation horribly, and because of this, Madelyne is able to walk away unscathed.

Just then, Norman calls Latura into his office because he has no idea who he is. After he’s reminded that Latura got fired in 1995, he wonders who the hell he thinks he is for barging into their office. However, Latura lets him know he’s familiar with every inch of the tunnel because of that terrorist hypothetical he did two years back. Frank comes in to let everyone know the chief is dead, so technically he’s acting chief now. His co-worker says they don’t know the stress points of the mid-river, so they can’t risk explosives. They have to do everything by hand which could take 10-12 hours minimum, only if another shaft doesn’t give. However, the air inside the tunnel is only going to hold for three more hours. It’s decided that Frank will give Latura clearance to head in himself to save these people, and he’ll go through the only entrance remotely possible: the dangerous ventilation system. At the same time, all the survivors on the inside are being led by Roy Nord, who is determined to find a way out.

My Thoughts:

There comes a time in almost every action hero’s life where they have to do a disaster movie. Sylvester Stallone’s attempt was Daylight. Though nobody talks about it when speaking of the great disaster films of the genre, I thought it was pretty entertaining. Well, I don’t want to talk it up too much. Stallone, the action, and the “disaster” elements were awesome. The rest of the stuff was what brought it down.

It all started with the supporting characters. They all had a scene or two before the explosion to explain generally who they are as people, but it was not nearly enough for me to care for them. Other than Madelyne being a failed playwright, and her getting two very funny voicemails to explain everything else she’s been going through, the majority of the backstories weren’t interesting. Because of this, when certain characters died, I didn’t feel the connection to them I should’ve. Plus, there are too many deaths to decent people. By the end of it, I felt kind of numb. I almost lost it when the dog survived over the old lady. Are you kidding? There’s no way a dog could’ve even gotten to the final stage of the movie. They had to go underwater to get there! If you didn’t want to kill off the dog, but you also wanted to make things a bit more realistic, you have to meet us somewhere in the middle. How about don’t add a dog in the first place? It complicates and limits what you can do with the characters in certain situations. The reason the couple had the dog was sweet, but for the writer to choose to keep the dog living over the old lady (that has been through hell in her life mind you) was a slap in the face. I don’t want to make this whole review about the dog, but this needed to be brought up to show you how the reasons and decisions in which characters died and survived were so “all over the place”.

Viggo Mortensen’s Roy Nord character for instance was a total douche, right? They killed him off right after my summary ends. It was kind of funny when all that stuff crushed him but despite his douchey personality, he was easily the most layered and most interesting character next to Stallone’s Kit Latura himself. He had an identifiable character, a personality that deserved its screentime, and he had a lot of room for growth. He hooked me right away when he told the girl with the camcorder to record him because the public is going to want to know how they got out. That confidence can fill a room with positivity not only for the characters, but the viewing audience as well. I’m convinced he was killed off for shock value, but I just felt like his role on this inspired team Latura creates would’ve been big. It also would’ve given us a lot of extra conflict that I felt the story needed. Nord could’ve led a small faction that believed he could get them out, while the others could follow Latura. Eventually, it could lead to Nord and his group almost dying, with Latura saving them and Nord being grateful for the whole experience. On the other hand, Nord could’ve been the guy they left behind in the climax as he leans into his ignorance tremendously, telling Latura he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then, he could leave the group alone to find a way out, only to die in the same way he actually does in the movie. He had the character arc potential of Richard Chamberlain in The Towering Inferno, and I mean that in the most positive way possible.

My point is that Roy Nord could’ve been huge for the second act of this film and could’ve given the writers so many avenues to go down to make the story just as interesting as the disaster premise itself. Everyone would’ve benefitted greatly from it, including Stallone. He needed a single adversary with a dominant personality that could bring the fire out of Latura once again. It would’ve been much better than the annoying group of women and argumentative men that were constantly in his face instead. Latura needed a villain that either couldn’t be saved or someone that achieves redemption through realization. This would’ve saved the story inside the tunnel.

Regarding the rest of the supporting cast, HOLY FUCK. They could not shut the hell up! At every turn, these people want to argue with Kit Latura, the only person that knows everything about the tunnel. The horrible father character even says at one point, after he’s done trashing Latura’s life, that Latura is the only chance they got. Latura agrees with him on his last point, pleading with the guy to meet him halfway for the sake of time, and the dude scoffs like he knows how to solve this issue himself when he clearly doesn’t. There are numerous instances like this in Daylight with the people he’s saving. They try their absolute best to prove they aren’t worth saving by going at Latura like he’s the one that put him there. If anything, it shed the light on actual issues in America today in that everyone has an opinion on why something is wrong, but no one has a solution on how to solve it. Guess what? If you don’t know what to do, SHUT THE FUCK UP! Kit Latura is a much more patient man than I am because there’s no way I could go through this situation without cussing out at least two of these people from the get-go.

Give me a break, I worked in retail.

I really enjoyed Stallone’s work as Latura though. He was likable and still carried a lot of his action hero traits without sacrificing emotional moments needed to make the character interesting. Usually, it would be pretty hard for me to be interested in a character whose background is that of an EMS chief that now works as a taxi driver because this isn’t something you normally see in a movie, but I latched on pretty quickly because of the situation at hand and Latura’s insistence on having to act now. Stallone grabbed my attention by force. What’s most admirable of Stallone’s disaster movie take was that he wasn’t an absolute cornball that saves everyone he gets his hands on even in the most outrageous of situations (like The Rock in San Andreas). Kit Latura is a sorrowful loser. He’s much easier to like because he’s experienced a lot of hardships in his life, and he shows it on his guilt-ridden face. He’s been fired, his decisions have cost lives, and he doesn’t have the confidence you would expect a hero to have in this situation. This is why he’s able to take so much verbal abuse from the people he’s trying to help. It’s almost as if he feels like he’s not worthy and deserves the hateful criticisms. He messed up and he knows it. This disaster allows for his redemption, so he can prove himself again.

Besides the exciting action, some of the best parts of the movie had to have been when Latura admits to Madelyne he didn’t really know how to get them out. He gets to a point in the movie a few times where he’s basically admitting defeat. He doesn’t know where to go because all of these exits are being clogged up. It added a sense of fear and anxiousness that was much more serious than the actual action scenes. This is where we see a glimpse of the resilience in our supporting characters. They try to hype up Latura and come with solutions they can work together on to help him, finally coming to the realization they need to be on the same page to figure this all out. They’ve exhausted Latura and now he needs their help, despite him never asking for it. This part, along with them saving George from the car laying on top of him, can actually give you goosebumps because of the simple fact that it gives us hope. It shows that in a time of need, humans will band together to save their own people and honestly, it was a heartwarming message. There should’ve been more of that type of stuff over what we got, which was watching these pricks from New York argue nonstop with each other. The unsure Latura also came into play in the climax as well, and it was really intense because of Stallone’s earnest performance. He screams at the group to leave him, as he’s fully prepared to call it a life because there doesn’t seem to be an alternative, but they didn’t want to leave him just yet. It was a big moment and including Madelyne added a lot to it (with a nice bit of humor when she’s telling them not to leave and Latura telling them to leave), giving us a solid ending to a movie that could’ve been A LOT better had there been a few tweaks.

Daylight did some things very well. The explosion that ignites (pun always intended) the story was awesome, with the fire and the special effects being highly memorable to say the least, adding majorly to the gravity of the situation. The action was great once Stallone got involved too. The scene where Latura has to climb through the moving air vents in particular was the best one, though since it happened so early into the action, I didn’t feel like anything following it reached this level of excitement. The ending got close (the “blow out” scene) but not close enough. Kit Latura was a solid character and Stallone put his all into it. I’ll give him credit. However, almost every supporting character either sucked, was super annoying, not enough information was given about them, or they died just as we started to become interested in them. Because of this, some of the dialogue suffered. I still don’t really understand what happened between Frank and Kit that warranted his firing either. Did he get Frank’s brother killed? I wasn’t really sure but when he started to explain it, he said to Madelyne in a dramatic moment that because she’s a writer, she can fill out the rest or something of that sort. Of all times to have a full-blown conversation, this would’ve been the one.

Daylight does what you came for well. It’s got Stallone, and it’s got action. The problem is that in a disaster movie, the most crucial part is to make sure that the audience wants these people to be saved. I didn’t get that here. It’s not that I hated all of them, it’s just that I didn’t care for them either. That’s a big part to fail on.

Fun Fact: Director Rob Cohen wanted Nicolas Cage in the lead role, but Universal felt like Cage was more of a “character actor”.