Daylight (1996)

Written by CinemaSerf on August 27, 2023

Now I would have thought that the last thing you'd allow to travel through a tunnel with billions of gallons of water above it, would be a truck full of explosives; but hey - if you need to make a film for Sly to come to the rescue, you've got to start off with a daft premisss. Add to this, a getaway car full of robbers that manages to collide with said truck and we have a load of superb pyrotechnics and then a sort of subterranean version of the "Poseidon Adventure" (1972) as our hero tries to lead a group of survivors up top. It takes far too long to actually get going: Sly leaves the rather incompetent rescue-management team on the surface to facilitate the rescue but only after about half an hour of disaster/character establishment that we could have easily have done without. A bit like with it's earlier maritime counterpart, there are some decent moments when all their lives are in peril, and Sly chivvies the gang along with a mixture of cajoling and threat, but the thing is all just so formulaic - even down to the dog and many of them, by the end, deserved what they got!