Daylight Reviews

The product of the pure application of money to formula, this modern-day disaster movie pits disgraced EMS chief Kit Latura (Sylvester Stallone) and a plucky cross section of Manhattan society — the frustrated playwright (Amy Brenneman) fleeing NY, the macho sporting-goods magnate (Viggo Mortensen); the grieving old couple (Claire Bloom, Colin Fox) and the genial bridge and tunnel cop (Stan Shaw) — against mud, fire, water, falling debris, rats, toxic fumes and bureaucratic indifference in the aftermath of an explosion in New York's traffic-choked Holland Tunnel. Until the patently preposterous finale (you can just hear the studio suits saying, "Ya gotta make it big"), the miserable perils faced by the damp, sooty, squabbling motorists are claustrophobically convincing, assuming you accept in the first place that they escaped a fireball that looks as though it should have fried every living thing between the New Jersey and Manhattan shores. Who will survive and what will be left of them? We can't believe you won't know exactly where to place your bets -- the kindly guard might as well have "Dead Man" scrawled on his forehead, and if we were trapped down there under the Hudson, we'd make a point of sticking close to the dog.