Mad Times

Daylight

I actually only watched part of this, so Becky will have to correct me if I get any of the details wrong. It's your basic disaster action movie where a New York tunnel gets damaged when something explodes. (It doesn't matter what explodes, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you). Naturally there's only one man who can save the poor civilians trapped underground: Bruce Willis. No, wait, wrong movie, in this one it's Sylvester Stallone. Sly plays a paramedic (Becky says he's a taxi driver who used to be the director of emergency services or something) who has a major guilt complex about a rescue that went bad years before where people died and it was all his fault. Anyway, Sly goes through the big scary fans (think Chompers ala Galaxy Quest) and leads the scared and scary civilians to safety. Well, most of them anyway. Stuff explodes, stuff implodes, people freak out, people persevere, there's even a dog.

Why would we watch such a film you ask? Regular readers of Mad Times will have already figured out that the answer must be Viggo Mortensen. Viggo plays an extreme sports star (Becky says he's a sports equipment salesman who's into extreme sports. She agreed with someone on IMDB who called him an "adventure man") who gets squished like a bug for hubris half-way through the film. It's almost worth watching the movie to see his very funny performance. Almost.

The movie was released in 1996, and is, in a lot of ways, a tribute to emergency service personnel, so it's kind of eerie watching the final scenes of the film where the World Trade Center towers are the backdrop for practically every shot as paramedics and firefighters guide the victims of this fictional disaster to safety.

Verdict:1-1/2 stars (out of 4)