Stallone saves us again in “Daylight” 4K UHD

4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS

• 

• 

Sylvester Stallone stars as disgraced former NYC Emergency Medical Services Chief Kit Latura, trying to save Holland Tunnel patrol officer George Tyree, played by character actor Stan Shaw. A fireball consumes the tunnel from an explosion of hazardous chemicals.

(Click an image to scroll the larger versions)

4K screenshots courtesy of Turbine/Universal Pictures - Click the jacket for a Turbine purchase

“DAYLIGHT”

4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray (Kino Region A, Turbine Region Free); 1996; PG-13 for disaster-related, Peril, death, and destruction

Best extra: Restoring ‘Daylight’ – Light at the End of the Tunnel (Turbine) & Commentary with director Rob Cohen (Kino Lorber & Turbine)

Click the jacket for a KL Studio Classics copy via Amazon

IN MARCH 2025, Kino Lorber mysteriously pulled its 4K UHD release of Rob Cohen’s ‘90s disaster flick “Daylight,” just hours after it hit online and brick-and-mortar stores.

We received an advance 4K copy from Kino and published our “Daylight” review on March 10. No official word was provided from Kino at the time, but physical media expert Bill Hunt posted on his Digital Bits website that it had been “delayed indefinitely, although, they (including Kino’s upcoming “Dante’s Peak” 4K) are not cancelled.”

In the meantime, German-based Turbine announced its own “Daylight” 4K version, with additional extras and an exclusive new interview with director Rob Cohen. It arrived last December, and right off the bat, we noticed a positive difference in the HDR color grading, and its new Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

Cohen says, during the Restoration featurette, “Daylight” was originally shot on 35mm film, “processed chemically, timed chemically and then released on film.” He then pinpoints the digital post-production revolution of the 2000s, “giving the director an enormous amount of freedom,” in adjusting the colors, contrast and brightness to their desired look.

The director credits the talented color graders at Turbine, who took the 4K scanned files from the original camera negative and made the HDR adjustments, “to finally get it to look the way I wanted it to look.” For decades he felt the original theatrical prints were way too bright inside the tunnel, so moviegoers could see the actors' faces. With the new HDR grading, which he supervised, they isolated the actors' faces and brightened those so very slightly, while keeping the tunnel much darker, as you would expect after a massive explosion.  

Finally, 17 months later, Kino Lorber has released the second pressing of “Daylight.” Surprisingly, the HDR color grading matched the German 4K disc. But we discovered two slight differences: the video bitrate of the new Kino disc runs consistently 10 Megabits per second less than the Turbine disc, while both are encoded onto a 100 GB disc. And the HDR10 nit levels are different between the two editions. (details in the specs).

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

(1) The hazardous chemicals are prepared to be loaded onto three trucks. (2) The 1.25-mile Holland Tunnel was completed in 1927 and runs under the Hudson River, connecting Hudson Square and Lower Manhattan. (3) Director Rob Cohen used a miniature helicopter - years before drones were available - to capture this shot in the tunnel. (4&5) Tunnel patrol officer George Tyree communicates with tunnel operation dispatcher Grace Calloway (Vanessa Bell Calloway).

HISTORY/PLOT

THE 1970s were seemingly the decade of the Hollywood disaster movie: “Airport” (1970), “The Andromeda Strain” (1971), “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), “The Towering Inferno” and “Earthquake” (1974), “The Swarm” (1978), and “Meteor” (1979).

However, during the ‘90s, the genre experienced a major resurgence. Topping the list was James Cameron’s $1 billion-plus blockbuster “Titanic” (1997), which dominated the Oscars with 11 wins, and Jan de Bont’s storm-chasing adventure “Twister” (1996), starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.

Then, Roland Emmerich’s alien invasion “Independence Day” (1996), which made Will Smith a superstar; Ron Howard’s true-to-life space accident “Apollo 13” (1995), “Houston we have a problem.” In 1997, two volcano explosions, “Volcano” and “Dante’s Peak,” and the next year, two Doomsday comets in “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.”

In 1996, director Rob Cohen (“The Fast and the Furious”) decided to helm his high-octane disaster “Daylight” starring Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Stan Shaw, Dan Hedaya, and Vanessa Bell Calloway.

Several truckloads of hazardous chemicals explode inside the 1.25-mile Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River, killing hundreds. Former NYC Emergency Medical Services Chief Kit Latura, now a limo driver, played by Stallone, just happens to be entering the tunnel when the fireball consumes the north tunnel heading toward New Jersey. You guessed it: he walks out alive and offers to reenter the tunnel, facing impossible odds to rescue survivors.

• 

• 

• 

• 

(1) Amy Brenneman plays inspiring playwright Madelyne Thompson. (2-4) Left, director Rob Cohen in a cameo role as an advertising executive, during a marketing campaign meeting with adventure gear executive Roy Nord, played by Viggo Mortensen.

EXTRAS

• NEW “Restoring ‘Daylight’ – Light at the End of the Tunnel” (18 mins.) – (Turbine) a new laptop interview with Cohen from his personal office. He details the original ‘90s way of making “Daylight” using film stock, chemicals, and, eventually, theatrical prints, which were three generations from the OCN. He admits the old school process undercut the claustrophobic reality of the collapsing tunnel, “with all of the fill light, background wall washes, and over-lighting the actors.” But today, “there’s not one pixel in the frame that can’t be adjusted to taste,” he says. “You have infinite flexibility when you go down the line to your digital grading.”

  
  

  The featurette includes side-by-side comparisons between the old 2010 Blu-ray grading to the new 2025 grade during a scene with Brenneman in her rundown NYC apartment. Now, it’s much darker and shadowy with a cooler color palette. The rest of the film is a “journey into darkness.”

• The original “Making of” featurette (1998) (33 mins.) – (Kino & Turbine) with cast and crew interviews. At the time, Stallone felt that “Daylight” was more of a psychological adventure – “the elements of nature working against the indomitable spirit of the survivors.”

  
  

  The director himself had been a survivor of the deadly 1979 Copley Plaza Hotel fire in Boston. When he first read the script at his ranch near Lake Tahoe, he had a horrifying flashback of firefighters rescuing him from the hotel’s sixth-floor window. “The window exploded, and all I remember, he [firefighter] threw himself over me.” ‘Daylight’ became Cohen’s payback, “to the men and women who …risk their lives in these horrible disasters.”

  
  

  Cohen sold the movie to Stallone as a worthy successor to his performance in the action-thriller “Cliffhanger” (1993), which dealt with heights. This time, it's “claustrophobia and the fear of drowning,” he told Stallone. “You’re not a life taker, but a lifesaver, and if that sounds intriguing, read it.”

  
  

  Stallone initially had a list of excuses: I hate being wet, working in darkness, and small spaces. “I’m claustrophobic,” he told the director. But, Cohen reminded him, the reason he took the role in Cliffhanger was to conquer his fear of heights. “Here are a whole new bunch of your fears to conquer,” he told Stallone.

• The Director’s Commentary track – (Kino & Turbine) is chock-full of behind-the-scenes stories and details of the Italian production. Ninety percent of the film was captured at Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studio (“Ben-Hur,” “Cleopatra,” “U-571” “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”) where they constructed the entrance and the interior of the Holland Tunnel.

  
  

  He also details how “Daylight” was based on a 1949 explosion inside the Holland Tunnel. Writer Leslie Bohem discovered the incident while breezing through old copies of Life Magazine. A truck carrying 55 drums of hazardous chemicals lost one drum onto the roadway, and it ignited, causing a massive fire that burned for hours. Surprisingly, no deaths were reported, but 66 injuries and 600 feet of the tunnel’s white-tiled interior were destroyed.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

(1&2) Limo/taxi driver Kit Latura picks up a couple at a Manhattan hotel and prepares to take them through the Holland Tunnel. (3&4) A crazed driver races into the tunnel after robbing a jeweler and crashes into the trucks, causing the inferno. A miniature tunnel and cars were used for this practical-effects shot. (5) Latura quickly jumps into the rescue efforts.

• NEW Alternate ending with an intro from Cohen (6 mins.) – (Turbine) who feels 30 years later, “the dialogue just gets silly” during the final sequence. “It really annoyed me. You have pressure from the studio, the stars, and your own inner judgment at the time.”

  
  

• Universal Electronic Press Kit (EPK) featurette (1996) (6 mins.) – (Kino & Turbine) the “Daylight” studio preview with movie clips and narration from ‘90s Hollywood voice actor Don LaFontaine.

• Universal International EPK featurette (1996) (7 mins.) – (Turbine) a minute longer with behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and movie clips with English narration.  

• NEW “Memories with Muscle” (12 mins.) – (Turbine) a recent conversation with Italian makeup supervisor Giannetto De Rossi, who had nothing but high praise for lead actor Stallone.

• “Three Trailers” (5 mins.) – (Kino & Turbine) U.S. Teaser, U.S. theatrical trailer, German trailer.

  
  

• “Music Video” (4.5 mins.) – (Kino & Turbine) “Whenever There is Love” performed by Bruce Roberts and Donna Summer.

• Production gallery (76 mins.) – (Kino & Turbine) Images from the production design, storyboards, miniature effects, fan sequence, cyclone room, ILM concept boards, bedrock chamber, milk tanker, production photographs, marketing.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

VIDEO

The original 35mm camera negative (1.85:1 aspect ratio) was scanned in 4K; the result is quite good. The 4K from Turbine and Kino has plenty of natural film grain; the Turbine Blu-ray was also sourced from the revised 4K grade. The clarity is very good in facial close-ups and wide shots from Australian cinematographer David Eggby (“Mad Max,” “Pitch Black”).  

There are shortcomings during composite effects shots, which lowered the resolution – especially the finale of Stallone and Brenneman in the Hudson River. It also suffers from weird color timing as the two actors bob in an obvious water tank, with separate footage of the Manhattan skyline in the background. My 11-year-old son and I saw the same color issue during its original theatrical run in December 1996.

The HDR10 and Dolby Vision grading provides a darker and more natural color balance with controlled facial toning and highlights compared to the 1080p disc.

AUDIO

The new exclusive Turbine Dolby Atmos soundtrack envelops your home theater room nicely – especially overhead – but its bass response doesn’t match the intensity of the six-channel DTS-HD soundtrack on the Kino disc, especially during the explosion and tunnel collapse.

Since its early physical media days on DVD, “Daylight” has had one of the best bass tracks. At times, the dialogue seems to get lost, so pumping up the overall level only increased the bass response.

Composer Randy Edelman’s score is solid, but not at the level of his classics “DragonHeart” (1996) and “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992).

No matter which version of “Daylight” you purchase, it’s a welcome addition to your growing ‘90s disaster filmography on 4K Ultra HD. My personal pick is the German Turbine set, with its additional extras from Cohen. But it’s become a hard find, eight months after its release. Originally sold out on the Turbine website, but now back in stock, plus available at the jpc.de website, with a four-week waiting period, and international shipping an extra $25. So, if you want it NOW, Kino Lorber is your best option.

— Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

SPECS:

• 100 GB (Kino Lorber & Turbine)

• TRUE 4K mastering

• Captured on 35mm film stock (1.85:1 aspect ratio) with Arriflex cameras and Zeiss spherical lens.

• Video bitrate: Turbine averages 83 megabits per second, while the Kino disc averages at 76 Mbps, with a running time of 114 minutes.

• HDR10 maximum light level: Turbine 962 nit

• HDR10 maximum light level: Kino 1000 nit

• Max frame average light level: Turbine 685 nit

• Max frame average light level: Kino 193 nit

• Box office: Domestic gross $33 million, and the worldwide gross $160 million. The production budget $80 million.

• Rotten Tomatoes: Top Critics’ 15 percent, Audiences 37 percent.

• Metacritic: Critics 47 percent, User score 4.9

• Awards: Academy Awards - nominated for Best Effects.

• Razzie Awards: Worst Actor Sylvester Stallone, Worst Original Song.

• Movieweb.com – Best ‘90s disaster movies: “Daylight” was No. 12. No. 1 was “Twister” (1996), No. 2 “Titanic” (1997) and No. 3 “Apollo 13” (1995).

• The Hollywood Reporter – The Greatest Disaster Movies of all Time: “Daylight was No. 10. No. 1 “The Towering Inferno” (1974), No. 2 “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972) and No. 3 “Twister” (1996).