Daybreak (I) (2000) User Reviews

An informative step-by-step guide to surviving earthquakes.

[wheels128 · 3/10 · 25 September 2007]

Here are some of the important things I learnt while watching this movie:

• Smart and gifted kids, when paying for their train fare and noticing that they have 60 cents left to pay, put in one small coin and are dismayed when it comes up short of the 60 cents.

• Further to the last point, that coin dropped the total left to pay from 60 to 25 cents. Therefore, there must be a 35 cent coin. There just must be.

• All people getting on the subway at any one station will sit within two metres of each other, all on the one carriage. Absolutely everyone else on the train will get off on the next station. This just must be normal behaviour.

• Earthquake is just an abbreviation of "the camera is shaking".

• During earthquakes, fire burns on the the outside of non-broken 15th floor windows.

• The only buildings destroyed in earthquakes are created by computers.

• Men whose chests have been crushed by a steel support pole are only in pain when the pole is lifted off their chests.

• Teenage kids are never freaked out by unknown men giving them money, regularly initiating conversation and following them around darkened collapsed tunnels.

• One spark is all it takes to set the entirety of a subway carriage on fire. Within a second.

• There's always a nurse, an insecure beautiful girl, a man dealing with personal loss, a nerd and an aggressive criminal trapped by every cave-in.

• "A train full of unsuspecting commuters" really means four people.

• Explosions powerful enough to send dumpsters with two people half the length of a storage room are not powerful enough to move anything else in the room, despite many other items being lighter and closer to the explosion.

And finally, imagine a scenario where a reporter is told, during a press conference, that a few people are presumed to be dead. If these people were to appear (alive, of course) right next to the press conference, how would the reporter phrase her next question? (Keep in mind that by now, everyone knows that the people are alive.)

a) "Now that we know they are alive..." b) "Why did you assume they were dead when..." c) "A source tells me that these people may, in fact, be alive..."

If you answered (C), disregarding the fact that she had no source who could've seen the people alive and then relayed that information to her, and the reason she knows they are alive is that she has seen them with her own eyes, you would be correct.

A Decent Little Disaster B-movie With The Legendary Roy Scheider.

[lukem-52760 · 5/10 · 9 December 2021]

I had to check this out because I'm a huge Roy Scheider fan & have loved the guy since growing up watching the Jaws films & Roy Scheider always stood-out to me as a great screen presence & top actor.

Roy Scheider means alot to me as an actor, his face is a welcomed comfort in any film & he's in my top 3 actors of all-time.

Scheider will always be remembered as Cheif Brody from Jaws & Jaws 2 because the character is such an iconic role within movie history but Scheider is pretty much great in anything, Checkout his Blue Thunder, The Seven-Ups, The French Connection, Sorcerer & more as the guy was a lead star & everyman hero through the 70's & 80's & became a "Character Actor" in his later part of his Career through the 90's & starred in many low-budget productions & B-movies in smaller roles but he always delivered a strong performance & does so here in this low-budget Disaster movie called "Daybreak" it's pretty much similar to Stallone's Daylight in a way but it's just as entertaining & i like it better.

I got a nice sense of Nostalgia whilst watching this with it's pure 90's look & fashion. The colours are vibrant & everything is so 90's direct-to-video style but i love it as these types of films were everywhere on the shelves of Blockbuster video back in the 90's & i loved that place.

Daybreak puts a small group of survivors in the subway systems after an earthquake hits Los Angeles & their train crashes. We are shown each character at the beginning of the movie & each with their own drama that happened to them & then they all end up on the same train together. I love little survival Thriller's like this & the cast do a fine job together as they encounter more danger as they search for a way out. Adam Whylie plays the boy, Newton & he's a good actor & i recognised his face from Childhood faves of mine, Child's Play 2 & Kindergarten Cop.

The effects are typical low-level for a small production like this & expected but the action & danger are handled well & keeps things suspenseful.

Roy Scheider plays the head of the Train Authority as Stan Marshall & is a very good presence & lifts the B-movie material higher-up with his strong performance & his Awesome voice as he talks to the survivors on the radio & tries to guide them out of the subway whilst dealing with corrupted government officials & Scheider gives a no-nonsense performance.

Daybreak is a fun little B-movie, nothing more & nothing less.

Enjoy folks lol.

Daybreak - Daylight? Any similarities?

[NickBBK · 3/10 · 3 September 2006]

Wow. What a waste of a rental. This really goes to show that you should never judge a book (or DVD) by its cover. The train screaming down a subway tunnel with flames chasing it really reeled me in - only to find that I had already seen this movie - see "Daylight" starring Sylvester Stallone. The only differences between these two movies is that Daybreak ate faeces. Oh and "Daylight" actually contained some character building - something this movie lacked altogether besides a 5 minute throw together of random unrelated scenes from characters' pasts - which was hard to follow at first but soon gelled into the familiar combo of underground puzzles and shallow characters. Take the tough, fresh out of custody guy. One word - irrational. He opposes every obvious escape plan the others can think of. He also gets into a punch up with someone he barley knows whilst he should be worrying about being trapped underground in a swiftly flooding subway tunnel filled with gas leaks and cave-ins. The only bit I liked was when he died - which in itself was weak and also the very beginning - when the worker got doused in acid - that was cool. I won't go into the other characters or countless reasons this movie sucked - they're all the same - shallow, weak, and poorly acted. Now don't get me wrong - I liked Rob Cohen's "Daylight" - which is one of the reasons I hated Daybreak - it had the same basic plot but worse everything else. 3 out of 10 for the acid.

A very funny movie (too bad it is not supposed to be)

[gbalfour · 1/10 · 10 March 2002]

I am certain Roy Scheider must have sacked his agent after this movie. In fact, this movie was such a disgrace to that any respectable agent would have left the industry to become a use car salesperson. Here is an actor nominated for two Academy Awards, reduced to lines like, `Be careful down there!'

But there are so many people to blame for this abomination that it seems an impossible task to find any one person to blame. Geri Barger claims `writing credits.' I assume this is taking credit for the order in which every cliché in the history of disaster films is placed. There was certainly no original dialogue in this movie. In fact, nothing in this movie was original.

As in any movie where a group of people are stranded, there is the loudmouth who wants to pick a fight. The inevitable bimbo girlfriend of the loudmouth because they always seem to get a girl. The woman who has had problems with men and the man who is in charge but has something haunting him from the past. And, let's not forget a genius geek teen that naturally has all of the answers that save the day.

But so much of this movie is so implausible and so poorly acted that it left me with tears of laughter.

Mona Lisa snarling, The Wright Brothers in a pedal car! Bin Laden with a knuckle duster!

[uds3 · 1/10 · 14 February 2005]

There has to be a worse movie than this - R.O.T.O.R. and CHICKEN PARK spring to mind... Nah, this takes the cake! So God-awful amateurish, trite and laughable, I would think any first-year film student would be failed on this effort. Some wannabe Bruckenheimer has figured "Lets re-make DAYLIGHT with a subway wreck...Oh and by the way guys, we only got $500 tops!" I could have made a better and more entertaining film with my old cam-corder, the postman and the moth-eaten bitser next door: CUJO 2: THE POSTMAN NEVER CALLS TWICE You're talking crap plus. Special effects so un-special as to be the laughing stock of Hollywood......make that Anchorage, Alaska! An earthquake, consisting of a camera on its side, a few hazy photographs and someone tossing dust over the lens. A train-wreck you never see. Actors can't act, a script that was hand-written on cue-cards some 10 minutes before the crew turned up......and sadly, Roy Scheider embarrassing his entire career, his agent, his family and anyone who ever attended an acting workshop.

Speaking of which, I was once asked to strip to my undies, lie on the floor and portray a rose unfurling its petals in the morning sun. "Improvise," my drama teacher said. From memory I embarrassed not only myself, but every rose that ever bloomed. STILL I topped any and every performance in this inconceivably juvenile loser of a movie.

If you paid more than $1 for this trash in any bargain-basement-bin, you've "done" your money cold!

So that's why they don't have subways in LA.........

[Bailey-21 · 27 June 2001]

In modern day LA some bright city planner came up with the idea for a mass transit subway system in downtown LA. If you build it, they will come.......

Inevitably, an earthquake shakes the Los Angeles area, and hapless victims are trapped inside the subway tunnel. Ted McGinley is the transit maintenance scheduler - conveniently trapped as well, so that he can come to the rescue.

Sub plots include a dirty deputy mayor who wants the folks in the tunnel to stay put so they don't find the chemical waste he's been hiding down there while pocketing the disposal fees. Roy Scheider is the head of the transit authority, and deserves better. He makes the most of what he has to work with.

Mix equal parts of the Poseidon Adventure and Daylight, mix in some really bad dialogue and acting = Daybreak.

A terrible pile of garbage

[merem1 · 1/10 · 28 December 2019]

A movie that never should have been made. The acting is really bad. Everything is so embarrassing in this movie. It is really weak. Everything in it is poor. How do they make this nonsense?

A comedy?

[Gubby-Allen · 4/10 · 25 June 2002]

The 2 reviewers below have done me no favours whatsoever. I had many comments planned which between them they've both covered.

I'll repeat the main ones again. Every cliche in the book is used for the victims & their escape: screaming women, gobby macho bloke, man who works for the company, nerdy boffin teenager with thick NHS glasses (Only missing the sellotape on one side), people wanting fights instead of working together to get out, unexpected fires, floods, shakes & electricutions!. It was a shambles. Oh & lets not forget the bent high ranked official, on the fiddle, trying to keep the press away.

This film was on SKY & I hate myself for giving it as high as 4/10 but it had the potential for & occasionally threatened to be, (quite) exciting, but just lacked that story line suitable for person over 2 years old.

It must have been meant as a comedy.

Should never have seen the light of day...

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 2 February 2013]

That is how bad Daybreak is. Of course there may be some novelty value if you're in a good mood, but if you are screaming with laughter it is because of how unintentionally funny the movie in its awfulness is. Daybreak is very poorly rendered visually, it is very choppily shot and edited and the effects look as though they haven't even been finished. The sound doesn't do any favours either, coming across as bizarre and the lack of audio authenticity dilutes any terror anybody is meant to feel in this situation because the threat is instead unthreatening. The dialogue is cheesy and inane, and there is nothing exciting, surprising or suspenseful in the story with listless moments that are so ridiculous you can have £10 for each time you laughed(you'll probably find yourself at over £1000). The characters are annoying stereotypical cardboard cut-outs, especially the loudmouth constantly looking for a fight, and the acting is dire with a mixture of over and under acting and nobody even Roy Scheider can do anything with what they had to work with. In conclusion, an awful, unintentionally hilarious movie that should never have seen the light of day. 1/10 Bethany Cox