‘Get them back to daylight...’
I love Sylvester Stallone. I love disaster movies. I love the 90s as a cinematic decade. With Rob Cohen’s 1997 film Daylight, all the elements should be in place for the kind of film that I would ordinarily adore. And yet, something doesn’t quite click here…
Kit Latura (Stallone) is the former New York City Emergency Medical Services Chief who becomes a cab driver following some kind of unspecified tragedy. Following a Final Destination-esque series of accidents, Latura finds himself trapped in a tunnel beneath the Hudson River with a group of walking cliches and sob stories. There is an elderly couple. One guy who just wants to get home to his girlfriend so he can give her a watch. There is a dog knocking about. Everything is engineered to tug on the heartstrings in a po-faced, sentimental way and that is exactly why this film falls apart. It tries too hard to be a big-hearted film but ends up being pretty empty.
People dismissed Daylight upon release as “Die Hard in a tunnel’ but honestly this description gives Cohen’s film far too much credit. There is none of Die Hard‘s ingenuity here. In fact, the only saving grace is that Stallone is great in this kind of role. The everyman hero thrust into a situation beyond his control is very much in his wheelhouse. Unfortunately, the supporting cast are not good. I’m sure Amy Brenneman is a lovely person but she’s very annoying here, not helped by the inane dialogue that she is given to deliver. Of the supporting cast, Dan Hedaya and particularly Viggo Mortensen offer something interesting, at least, but this is a tough film acting-wise.
Daylight is not terrible. It’s the epitome of an average action film. I was fairly engaged during the run time despite the repetitive nature of the plot but the second the credits rolled I immediately forgot every shot of this film and writing this now watching Daylight already feels like a distant memory. Far from Sly’s finest hour…
