Daylight is a 1996 Disaster Movie, starring Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Mark Rolston, and Danielle Harris. It was directed by Rob Cohen and released in theaters on December 6, 1996.
When an explosion blocks New York's Holland Tunnel at both ends (cause by the thieves caught in the victim's Electroguard protected car from the briefcase heist), ex Emergency Medical Services Chief Kit Latura (Stallone) is the only one with the know-how and experience to save the day. Risking his life to join the survivors in the tunnel; he finds a feisty writer, an elderly couple, a famous action-man, a quarreling family, some young hoodlums, a security guard and even a Weimaraner dog. Can he put his own past tragedies behind him and bring this desperate group to safety?
This film provides examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: Latura entering the tunnel via an air vent - albeit a massive one. The scene wherein he passes through the four giant fans before they speed up is widely regarded as easily the best part of the movie.
- Asshole Victim: Roy Nord. Seriously, after the disrespectful way he blew off Kit, he totally had it coming.. Also, Kadeem, the big juvie who dies when he tries to kill Latura with a hunk of concrete.
- Award-Bait Song: Whenever There Is Love
by Donna Summer & Bruce Roberts. - Bat Scare: The Swarm of Rats, which scares some of the survivors but doesn't harm them and leads them to an escape-route.
- Bittersweet Ending: The tunnel is collapsed, George and Eleanor are among the casualties, but Latura and most survivors are rescued.
- Bury Your Disabled: George is left to die because of his broken neck. However, it's George's suggestion and he has to talk Latura into it.
- Chase Scene: What ends up causing the explosion in the tunnel.
- Closed Circle: The explosion was so powerful that all ways out of the tunnel have collapsed, are too compromised for digging at a pace fast enough to reach the survivors in time (or use at all, as Roy Nord discovers the hard way), or in the case of the main ventilation shaft have a failsafe that prevents it from being shut down again and the first time on its own is a death course.
- Cold Equation: Agreeing to let George stay behind (and die.)
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The reason why they're dumping the illegal waste in New Jersey by driving through the tunnel. And despite this decision being one of the primary causes of the disaster, he's not shown to receive any comeuppance for it.
- Curse Cut Short / Killed Mid-Sentence: A construction worker who sees the fireball coming from below only has enough time to exclaim "JESUS CHRI-" before being incinerated.
- Deadly Rotary Fan: To reach the people trapped in the tunnel, Latura must abseil down between the blades of the massive fans in the ventilation system. The blades can only be slowed down for a short period of time, and once they're back up to speed they could chop him to bits in seconds.
- Death by Despair: It's implied Ellie decided to let herself die after losing her dog Cooper (who she loved like a son) during the swim underwater. For further drama, her husband Roger thought for a moment she was just tired from the swim and Cooper reappears a minute later.
- Death by Looking Up: When the debris in the shaft that Roy is climbing up begins to collapse, he quickly rappels back to the bottom, but doesn't have time to unhitch himself from his harness before it all comes down on his head. The last thing he does is look up at it.
- Death by Materialism: The entire disaster is sparked because one of the diamond thieves in the beginning of the movie stoops down to pick up spilled diamonds and causes the driver to accidentally floor it, sending them into one of the trucks and causing the explosions.
- The truck drivers carrying unsecured hazardous explosive chemicals in filmsy plastic barrels through the tunnel so they can illegally dump them in Jersey for a payday in the first place would also count as this.
- Decoy Protagonist: Viggo Mortensen is billed third to Sylvester Stallone and Amy Brenneman. His role just has him showing that he's an egocentric survivalist. He promptly gets killed when he tries climbing an unstable tunnel shaft that Latura explicitly states is treacherous.
- Diabolus ex Machina: After the explosions, the tunnel turns into this for Latura. Toward the end, he's even daring it to keep trying to kill him (and the last survivor) as he plants his final explosive. They both survive.
- "Die Hard" on an X: "Die Hard" in a tunnel, though the Big Bad is not any person, but the water seeping in.
- Disaster Dominoes: The tunnel collapse occurs this way.
- Doomed Hurt Guy: George is severely injured to the point he requires restraining and spinal bracing after part of the tunnel collapses and he decides to order Latura to leave him behind (in the flooding tunnel to die) when the group goes look for a way out through the old construction shelters.
- Don't Tell Mama: Inverted. Kadeem, the Ax-Crazy juvie, is fatally injured and asks the other survivors to find his father and tell him that he tried to help them. Roger swears that he will tell Kadeem's father that he was a hero and Kadeem's last words are "he won't believe you."
- Drives Like Crazy: The crooks in the getaway car, who start the disaster.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Latura is this in-universe after a Noodle Incident that led to the ruin of his career and multiple casualties.
- Improbable Infant Survival: The dog survives against all odds.
- Jerkass:
- Nord. The man decides to try to save the people in the tunnel mostly because it would provide him with a whole lot of publicity. He also dismisses the passing of his friend (that was fried by the initial explosion) with borderline nonchalance.
- Kadeem is a borderline Ax-Crazy juvie who responds to Latura going after Nord into the compromised side tunnel with an angry "you stay here!" and tries to smash his head with a rock when Latura disobeys.
- The unnamed New York traffic executive who shows zero regard for the possibility of there still being survivors and when she orders the tunnel to be reopened, risk of collapse be damned.
- Wilson, "Mr. California", the guy who replaced Latura as the chief of the emergency services. The guy takes Latura's sincere attempt to provide information about how to work on the tunnel based on simulations the services had done before under his command and tells him to go to hell.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- The diamond stealing thieves getting into an accident and dying could be considered that if not for the fact that they took the whole tunnel with them.
- The bunch of corrupt truckers carrying highly volatile toxic waste to be covertly dumped in the New Jersey countryside being blown up by said waste could also count if not for the fact that the explosion is the cause for the whole plot.
- Kadeem, the big juvie who had to be pried off Latura, attempts to kill him with a large chunk of concrete while Latura is scampering for his life. The collapse Latura was escaping from causes a rush of air strong enough to blow Kadeem across the tunnel and slam him into the opposite concrete wall, injuring him so severely he dies moments later.
- Both Roy Nord and Wilson underestimate the tunnel and disregard the warnings of others (especially Latura) to not do anything too risky and are literally flattened by said tunnel shortly afterwards.
- Noodle Incident: Why Latura stopped being an EMT and is now a limo driver. All that it's known for sure is that it was a disaster that forced him to resign in disgrace, made national news, and killed the brother of Frank Craft (Dan Hedaya's character) among other people.
- Novelization: By Max Allan Collins.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The city officials that want to open the tunnel right away even though that means it will kill the survivors.
- Product Placement: A Panerai Luminor Marina is featured consistently on Sylvester Stallone's wrist. Incidentally, it was his own choice, having seen then massive (for that time) 44mm watch in a shop window during a trip to Florence. He then proceeded to buy quite a few of them, which he insisted on wearing in the film. This move is often credited for popularizing Panerai outside of Italy.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: An elderly couple, a jerkass action guy, several juvies, a family, a failed playwright, a security guard, a dog, a family and an ex-EMT chief.
- Retirony: George, the security guard guy.
- Rising Water, Rising Tension: An explosion traps commuters in a tunnel under the Hudson River as water starts to seep in.
- Scary Black Man: Kadeem, the largest of the convicts. He has severe anger and control issues and has to be pulled off Latura after attacking him and later attempts to kill him. He's the only one of the convicts that doesn't make it.
- Stupid Crooks: The jewel thieves who speed through a busy traffic tunnel mess around with the diamonds distracting the driver and end up crashing into a truck carrying explosive materials. The fact they also didn't take his cell phone, thus allowing the man to easily call the police, makes them even more facepalm-worthy.
- Kadeem, the big juvie who decides attacks Latura for little reason who then dies when he makes another attempt.
- Suit with Vested Interests:
- The Jerkass member of the NY traffic commission that orders an immediate opening of the tunnel even if that means risking structural collapse and flooding and everybody that is still alive inside getting killed, because she won't take New York traffic being collapsed so much as one second longer.
NY Traffic Commision representative: [after being begged by the emergency services for more time] We dig. You clean up.- Roy Nord decides to try to escape the tunnel because, well, he is trapped in there as well, but he definitely will benefit from being the savior of the day. He makes a call to his publisher as he begins climbing the derelict mid-river air intake to tell her to ready a chopper and a press statement that he saved the survivors.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- The punk diamond thieves who cause the initial accident.
- Roy Nord seriously thought his experience as a commercial action man would protect him. It doesn't.
- Kadeem tries to attack Latura despite him being a rescue worker, and ends up killed in another attempt.
- Title Drop: George telling Kit to take the survivors to back to daylight.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Dennis Wilson, "Mr. California", the man who took over as the Chief of EMT after Latura had to resign. He is on-screen long enough to showcase he is a textbook smug Hot-Blooded Commander Contrarian that hates Latura's guts... and then gets flattened by a collapsing tunnel he crawls into in order to see if he can find a way to access the main tunnel.Chief Dennis Wilson: [to Bloom, who has just emerged from an air shaft] Whaddya got?
Bloom: Sorry, Chief. Blocked about twenty feet in. [Coughs from all the dust that covers her] Structure's so shaky, I wouldn't even risk a firecracker.
Wilson: What about hydraulics? We brace up as we go...
Bloom: Can't be done!
Wilson: You listen to me. The person who says it can't be done is always interrupted by the one who just did it!
[Climbs into air shaft; air shaft immediately collapses, killing Wilson] - Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: When rats start pouring into the gang's temporary shelter, LaTonya freaks out and can barely move.