Review of Daylight (1996) by Christopher S — 28 Apr 2011

Sylvester Stallone's career is littered with these types of action flicks, and although "Daylight" tends not to be remembered fondly by many.Yet, I felt it was a pretty entertaining throwback to the classic 70's disaster flicks such as Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno and Airport. Sure it was predictable and pretty damn overly dramatic , but still entertaining.

Director Rob Cohen does OK, the character driven build up at the start only lasts for about twenty minutes so it's not long before the main action kicks in & then it's fairly action packed until the end. There are some good looking explosions & the the special effects scene where the trucks explode is impressive. The film is a little slow going at times but still fairly watchable.

With a supposed budget of about $80 million that's a lot of money and is what ended up on screen really eighty million dollars worth? Having said that Stallone got paid $20 million so maybe Daylight is only a $60,000,000 film? It flopped at the box-office with a mere ten million on it's opening weekend, the New York exterior shots were filmed on location in New York while all the tunnel scenes were filmed in studios in Rome in Italy. The acting is alright, Sylvester's son Sage Stallone has a small role as Vincent while despite near top billing Viggo Mortensen is barely in it and is killed off early on.

Daylight as a big budget Hollywood disaster flick is not a disaster at all, it's not the best film out there but it's far from the worst. Certainly watchable enough & it sticks to the genre rules which should please fans of this type of film.