Daylight (1996)

This was a smaller-scale disaster than those that affect an entire city or even the whole world. It involves the collapse of a tunnel - the Jersey one going under the river from NYC. Some bozos are transporting explosive powder illegally in a trio of trucks  and a trio of punks just stole some bling, driving erratically. These two sets of losers combine for the big Ka-BOOM inside the tunnel. We're briefly introduced to the main players right before the explosion. Everyone except about a dozen people inside the tunnel are killed.

Then there's the cab driver played by Stallone; he's actually the ex-fire chief - no lie! He'd been involved in some scandal a year back, involving deaths, and forced out. But now he's back! To Save the Day! The more intriguing character is played by Viggo Mortensen; he's some rich mountain climber or something. After the initial big boom, it looks like he may be the one to lead everyone out, mostly due to a super cockiness; but, there are always those unexpected collapses; hey, even expected ones - Stallone knows.
Besides drowning and sudden collapses, the major danger is hypothermia; the characters spend much of the film shivering. They also make a lot of stupid remarks - par for the course in these types of films. Amy Brennanman was always cute & spunky in films back then and she's that here; she's fleeing a roach & rat-infested apartment. Jay O. Sanders, Karen Young and Danielle Harris play a troubled family. Claire Bloom plays an older victim, hanging on to her dog due to the loss of a son. Stan Shaw plays the doomed cop; a lot of time is spent on his budding love with a transit employee on the 'other' side of the mess. It's all fairly cliched.
On the other side, Barry Newman and Dan Hedaya are among the ones trying to figure out rescue options, and Rosemary Forsyth pops up in one scene as a really cold government bureaucrat only concerned about the traffic problem, not the still-alive survivors stuck in the tunnel. As said, rather cliched. Also, I dunno how the few survivors managed to escape getting fried just by being in their cars; enormous flames roar past the vehicles and around them, yet they just get a bit discomfitted.

The FX are good - they should be for the then-$90 million production - but it's strange to me that this is basically a remake of a TV Movie from 1972, Short Walk to Daylight. That one starred James Brolin as a cop trying to lead people trapped in the subway to safety after an earthquake; it was more in the $1 million range budget, I'm sure.  BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10