Daylight

Sound:
"Daylight" may suffer from its dated source materials in the visual department, but the sound quality of the film is actually quite good. The aggressive sounding English Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 mix features constant sound emanating from all six channels. The film´s explosions and violent eruptions of water provide an audible palette where the .1 LFE channel rumbles with deep and powerful bass and each individual channel has a full plate of sound to deliver. The sound design of "Daylight" does force most sounds to be placed directly in one singular channel and the sound imaging across channels feels forced, but there is usually enough explosive sounds occurring, that it isn´t distracting. Dialogue is generally good, but a few moments of ADR recorded dialogue from Stallone sounds overly soft and doesn´t quite mix with the surrounding sound effects. Overall, I was pleased with the soundtrack and while it may not be as efficient or impressive as a modern mix, it sounded quite good for a film that is a dozen years old.

Extras:
A handful of "Bonus Features" accompany Sly Stallone on his HD-DVD debut. Running at just over a half an hour, The Making of Daylight (33:25) features the cast and crew discussing their involvement in the film and intermixing the talking heads segments with action sequences from the film. Stallone is an extremely intelligent man, regardless of what is typically believed, and he is always good for an interview, but this making of doc feels overly dated and contained too much Rob Cohen. Speaking of too much Rob Cohen, the Feature Commentary with Director Rob Cohen is an overly technical and detailed commentary track that will delight hard core movie buffs and fans of the film, but is a difficult sit through. I´ve always found Cohen to take his films a little too serious and this commentary is no exception. A collection of Theatrical Trailers (4:48) are meshed together. The oddly titled The Featurette (6:26) is a promotional piece for the film and typical of most short EPK features. The Music Video is for the song "Whenever There is Love" by Bruce Roberts and Donna Summer.

Closing Comments:
Old Sylvester Stallone action films are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I love "Cliffhanger" and have watched that film more than a dozen times and had previously owned the pricey LaserDisc special edition. I even find entertainment value in "Judge Dredd." "Daylight" falls into the category of films that I find entertainment value in, but do not cherish it as much as I do "Cliffhanger" or any of the actor´s older films. There is plenty of action, but "Daylight" suffers from having some of the most uninteresting characters you will every pay witness too. If it weren´t for Stallone, this movie would be unwatchable. The HD-DVD has a detailed picture that is plagued by compression issues. The sound is aggressive, but shows its dozen years with sound design that isn´t nearly as clean and fluid as modern action films. The bonus materials are for those who feel a deep need to delve deeper into "Daylight," but do not serve a purpose for most other viewers. A fun film, but not nearly as good as most other Stallone action films, "Daylight" could have been much better if I cared about more than two of the characters.

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