Daylight **** (1996, Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Stan Shaw, Jay O Sanders, Karen Young) – Classic Movie Review 13,203

The enormously entertaining old-style 1996 American disaster film Daylight stars Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya and Stan Shaw.

Director Rob Cohen’s enormously entertaining old-style 1996 American disaster film Daylight stars Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Stan Shaw, Jay O Sanders, Karen Young and Danielle Harris. Okay it is as corny as, well, old corns, but it is great hokum, stirring up memories of the best Seventies disaster films, and ready, willing and able to compete with them. Every revered antique cliché and stock character is given a thorough dusting off and presented as brand new. It has total faith and belief in itself. This is the way to go.

So what’s happened here, then? Oh yes, explosions cause both ends of an underground tunnel in Manhattan to collapse, trapping a group of people inside, who have to try to find their way out of the tunnel. That’s it for a taut and compact nail-biting 114 minutes. Main star Sylvester Stallone is in his prime and in his element as Chief Kit Latura, the disgraced former New York City Emergency Medical Services chief who tries to save the survivors trapped inside the tunnel.

Stallone’s winning performance, the nice cast of anguished star character actors, the impressive costly Rome studio production, the Nineties-style start-of-the-art special effects, David Eggby’s smart cinematography, Randy Edelman’s score, and the fiery explosion that it kicks off with at the start are a long list of the film’s main virtues.

Plus, there’s nothing too much wrong with the screenplay by Leslie Bohem, who went on to write the similarly minded Dante’s Peak.

The tunnel scenes were shot at Cinecittà Studios in Rome and some filming also took place in New York City.

It was released by Universal Pictures on 6 December 1996 in the US and on 26 December 26 in the UK.

It is a costly, impressive production at $80 million, but grossed $159 million worldwide.

Sylvester Stallone was chosen by the studio over the director’s original choice of Nicolas Cage to play Kit Latura as being more commercially viable.

Sylvester Stallone’s son Sage Stallone plays Vincent, a juvenile hoodlum arrested for being a con-artist. Sage Stallone was found dead on 13 July 2012, at his home in Studio City, Los Angeles, aged 36. He made his acting debut alongside his father in Rocky V (1990).

The cast are Sylvester Stallone as Chief Kit Latura, Amy Brenneman as Madelyne Thompson, Viggo Mortensen as Roy Nord, Dan Hedaya as Frank Kraft, Jay O Sanders as Steven Crighton, Karen Young as Sarah Crighton, Claire Bloom as Eleanor Trilling, Vanessa Bell Calloway as Grace, Renoly Santiago as Mikey, Colin Fox as Roger Trilling, Danielle Harris as Ashley Crighton, Trina McGee as Latonya, Marcello Thedford as Kadeem, Sage Stallone as Vincent,  Jo Anderson as Bloom, Mark Rolston as Chief Dennis Wilson, Rosemary Forsyth as Ms London, Luoyong Wang as Gem Dealer, Lee Oakes as a grunge, Barry Newman as Norman Bassett, and Stan Shaw as George Tyrell.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,203

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