Daylight - Turbine 4K UHD

If there's one thing I love (and sometimes hate) about this gig, it's reviewing the same movie more than once inside of a year for different releases. Given the import market compared to our domestic release slate, sometimes it just works out that way. Usually, my sentiments don't change from one review to the next, and I'm fairly content to just repost what I've already said. More or less, that's what's going to happen here, with the slight adendum that, having watched this movie again, I feel like it's grown on me. Not drastically, or anything, I still think the film has some shortcomings, but I felt the necessity to bump up my rating half a star from that a bit too mediocre 3/5 I originally gave it in March of 2025. Daylight still isn't close to Stallone's best film of the decade, but it's a solid action-adventure disaster flick that remains entertaining all these years later. Now, here's what I wrote the last time I reviewed Daylight: 

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

We’ve seen luxury cruise ships capsize. We’ve seen a luxury high-rise turn into a fiery apocalypse. We’ve seen massive earthquakes devastate entire cities. But have we seen dozens of people trapped in a commuter tunnel hundreds of feet below a river? Back in 1996, Rob Cohen and Sylvester Stallone teamed up to give us the latest spin on the apocalyptic survival subgenre with Daylight. It certainly is an exhilarating feature with some great setups and decent performances, but the film can’t quite overcome some hacky characters and plot conveniences. But then who watches a movie like Daylight for textured four-quadrent filmmaking?

Transporting illegal toxic waste isn’t a good idea. Transporting it through the tunnel under the Hudson is another stupid idea - especially when a gang of thieves are driving like a bunch of dickheads during their high-speed escape. When those reckless thieves smash into the transport truck, the toxic waste ignites creating a massive explosion that seals the tunnel at both ends. Now it’s up to former EMS Chief Kit Latura (Sylvester Stallone) to save the day. With a band of juvenile offenders (including Sage Stallone), the famous outdoorsman Nord (Viggo Mortensen), a small family (Jay O Sanders, Karen Young, and Danielle “Halloween” Harris), a tunnel cop (Stan Shaw), and washed-out playwright Madelyne (Amy Brenneman), Kit will have to work against time to get these people to safety before the tunnel collapses.

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

Daylight isn’t complicated. It’s not overly elaborate. It’s the sort of action freight train you get your brain out of the way of and enjoy it for what it is - big dumb summer movie fun. It’s not a smart film, but a clever one, and sometimes clever is enough to get the job done. In keeping with disaster survival genre films great and small, characterizations are relatively thin. They’re the placeholder variety so you get what you need to know about them so you feel bad if a good one dies or a bit relieved if a schmuck gets what's coming. At the same time, Daylight could have used a little extra oomph in that department for its leading man. 

Stallone dives into the fray essentially replaying a version of his time as Gabe Walker from Cliffhanger. He’s the guy who knows what to do, but for some weird reason he’s not the first man EMS calls when the crap hits the ventilation fan. There's a lot of time wasted of him "proving" he's the guy when he's always going to be the guy. It’s just one of those odd plot contrivances designed to set up some sort of tension but never lasts past the second reel. As part of Stallone’s mid-90s “Meh” period (The Specialist, Judge Dredd, & Assassins) Daylight was a return to form for the action star. No guns, just brawn, and his leading-man personality commanding the scene.

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

Ever the journeymen director, Rob Cohen keeps the energy up and the pace moving. Again, that may sacrifice characterization and drama, but the benefit is the inertia a film of this sort needs to hold your attention. I’ve never thought Daylight was a great film, but it was a fun one. I have fond memories of catching it in theaters when I was 14, I kept up with it here and there on home video, and now it’s here on 4K. Not the best Stallone film, not the greatest, most memorable action flick of that decade, but I was happy to see it still holds up and was an entertaining way to spend a Saturday evening. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Daylight detonates a new two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray release from those wily Germans over at Turbine. The 4K is pressed on a BD100 disc with a Region Free BD50 serving the 1080p experience. The discs are housed in a standard two-disc black case with a stylish paper slipcase instead of the standard o-card slipcover. The discs load to a Rob Cohen introduction for the film before arriving at a language option menu, German or English so if you don’t want to read German titles and so forth, you can slip right over to the English menu option and go from there.

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

So, domestically, Daylight has had a very bizarre release from KLSC. Initially sort-of released last March, the disc was pulled (but after Amazon and other retailers already shipped a number of copies out) and to date has not reentered KLSC’s release frame. Looking at the disc then, I thought it looked pretty good. Not amazing, not a demo-worthy disc, but okay for a mid-90s film without any expectations for it. At that point, I hadn’t seen the film in years and was simply happy that it looked better than the old Blu-ray. 

But, there is a unique “however” to this title. At the time, and I knew this had been in the works for quite a while, German boutique label Turbine was prepping its own edition of Daylight on 4K. What I didn’t know, though, was that they were doing their own transfer under the supervision and approval of Director Rob Cohen, and these two transfers are very different. Since the techs at Turbine did their own work, with some very slight differences in framing, this disc does not appear to simply use the same base 4K master as KLSC with different HDR color timing. For starters, fine film grain is much better rendered and more tightly cinematic appearing. To that, I thought the image depth appeared immediately stronger. Fine lines in facial features, patterns in the mid-90s clothes, and small details in the tunnel wreckage all look cleaner now. Where the pattern in Stallone’s flannel shirt could look a bit murky and nondescript on the KLSC disc, it now has tight, well-defined fine lines in the Turbine disc. 

At the time, there was something I couldn’t quite put a finger on about the KLSC disc beyond some of the noted issues I had that made it feel a bit underwhelming, but I see it now: the color timing. The KLSC disc is notably brighter and more yellow/green-toned, and that had a twofold effect: it skewed colors into a strange, drab haze that made the image look flat, and some fine details became nondescript. The Turbine transfer goes cooler and darker - in some scenes, significantly so. This certainly skews towards revisionist timing on Cohen’s part, but his restoration interview in the extra features gives a lot of insight into why he wanted to make these adjustments and how the look of the film always bothered him. Suffice to say, it’s different, but I think it works better and may achieve what Cohen always intended but couldn’t accomplish, while also ensuring that fine details remain intact and look as sharp as you'd expect them to for a feature shot on 35mm film.

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

With this Dolby Vision grade, the primaries have a more natural pop to them, while skin tones look more natural and healthy, less orange than the KLSC disc. Shadows and black levels are certainly beefier in a lot of scenes, lending to the claustrophobia of the narrowing tunnels. As the film progresses and light sources become more limited, this transfer certainly skews much darker, but thankfully, it avoids crush, and you can still see characters and objects. Surface-level and indoor-office sequences look more natural without too much color tweaking there. Really, most of the notable tweaks are done in the tunnel, so it actually looks like folks are stuck in a dark tunnel with limited light sources. That visually chaotic hyper-contrasty climax sequence still looks strange, but it has always appeared a bit out there, blending all of those different VFX techniques into a single sequence like that. Ultimately, I have to tip my hat to this new Turbine-backed transfer over the KLSC one. The encode is cleaner, the grain is tighter and more cinematic, fine details are sharper and cleaner, and yes, the color timing is undoubtedly different from what might be expected, but I like it. I think all around, front to back, it looks a lot better than what we saw here in the States and makes the film more visually distinct now.

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

Adding fuel to the explosive fire of this release is a damned-exciting Dolby Atmos track. Given the big explosive events, the catacomb-like locations, the constant overhead activity - it’s just a title that works well for Atmos, and this new mix also comes with Cohen’s stamp of approval. I don't always love new Atmos tracks over more organic original mixes, but this one certaily stepped up to the plate and knocked it out. When and where it counts most, it’s a big beast. The big explosion in the tunnel is the highlight moment to be sure. When those concussive explosions rip, the LFE responds perfectly while all of the channels deliver on the action. When Stallone is trying to Spider-Man his way between the fan blades and into the tunnel, the surround and rear channels carry the whipping whirls of the blades in front of him while the blades above kick the overheads into gear. That imaging moves upwards as he makes each leap down. Then you get into the main action inside the collapsing tunnels. You get the echoes of flames and debris, the drip-dripping of water, and all of the other sounds of destruction working the front/center/side/rear/overhead soundscape beautifully. Dialog is crystal clear throughout without issue, and Randy Edelman’s score enjoys strong appointment without overpowering the track or being lost in the shuffle. There’s also a [CORRECTION] lossy DTS 5.1 [not DTS-HD MA 5.1 as previously stated] option for English language folks, but I have to say, flipping down to this track wasn’t as much fun. The 5.1 is still pretty good, a tightly confined-feeling surround experience, but for immersion and impact, that Atmos is where it’s at.

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

This run of bonus features is a nice, meaty selection. The Rob Cohen commentary returns, but this release is pumped up with a new introduction from the director. We get an insightful new interview with Cohen that really gets into the nitty-gritty of the restoration and what he intended to accomplish with the look and feel of the film. Next of note is a new re-cut version of the film’s end, which may fit better with Cohen’s thematic intentions and his introduction certainly explains the ins and outs of that decision. Some of the same archival Making of and EPK featurettes return, but we get a new segment with makeup artist Giannetto De Rossi and a production gallery to enjoy. Maybe not the most expansive, but certainly some good material to chew on once the film is over. 

• Rob Cohen Introduction (HD 00:56)
• Audio Commentary featuring Rob Cohen
• Rob Cohen on the Restoration (HD 18:41)
• Re-Cut Ending with optional Intro (HD 2:42/6:19 with intro)
• The Making of Daylight (SD 33:30)
• Featurette USA (SD 6:27)
• Featurette International (SD 7:44)
• Memories with Muscle (HD 12:05)
• Whenever There is Love - Donna Summer & Bruce Roberts Music Video (SD 4:31)
• US Teaser
• US Trailer
• German Trailer
• Production Gallery

Turbine 4K

KLSC 4K

Now that I’ve gone through Daylight twice inside of a year, I still don’t think it’s Stallone’s best actioner of the ‘90s, but I have to admit the film is growing on me. Maybe with a little more recent familiarity of just having seen it, I was pulled back into the tense fate of the survivors and how well Rob Cohen staged the various escapes and challenges. Some sequences might be a little heavy-handed, a tad cornball, but there’s a go-for-broke endearing quality to this actioner that helps raise the bar. One can see how early on in development this could have been a Cliffhanger sequel, but at the end of the credits, I’m glad it got to stand as its own adventure. Now, thanks to our friends at Turbine, we have a damned good reason to check this film out again with their own 4K UHD release. Dollars to donuts, it’s easy to say this is the superior release than what we saw (briefly and inexplicably still not available) here in the States. The movie’s growing on me, the Rob Cohen supervised restoration and transfer is better, the new Atmos is killer, the extras are worth the time. Highly Recommended 

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