Daybreak (1993)

Wonderful character development!

Overrated

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

I just rented this and I can't believe how moving it is. And how great Cuba and Moira are. Cuba maybe better than in anything else except Jerry Maguire. And also Omar Epps. He makes such a great villain!!! And the guy from Sex in the City--David Eigenberg--so helpless and lost and trying to find his way. Martha Plimpton was also awesome--complicated and conflicted and sad. She and Moira---you really believed they were best friends. Also one of the best kid performances I've ever seen. The story grabbed me and carried me along and I can't believe it was only made for television, I know that this is a story that will stay with me. Also the whole way it looked, the way the city felt, made me feel like I was right there living it with the characters. Bravo to all involved!

If you want to see some fine actors in a really bad movie, this is it."Daybreak" is a poorly written and drawn out science fiction abouta fascist US government using the fear and paranoia of a virus tocontrol the population.But instead of a riveting drama focused on the misuse ofinformation and abuse of public office, "Daybreak" weighs itselfdown with a romance that buries any possibility of strong socialcommentary.Regardless, a young Cuba Gooding Jr., Moira Kelly and MarthaPlimpton show their merit.

I recorded this because the Tivo program guide description described the movie as a "two rebels fighting a fascist government in the near future." The movie starts promisingly with a failed escape from a medical institution that leads to an execution and an eerily prescient city street scene borrowed (or stolen) from Soylent Green -- a group of people standing around watching a TV behind a barred storefront window, a menacing group of paramilitary thugs intimidating a homeless person, and a couple of girls in uniforms with the label "WorkFare" getting off work.This should have helped establish a backstory of a bleak near future of economic collapse, government propaganda and tyrany, and, as we're told later on, rampant disease and forced quarantine.Instead of building on all these ideas to tell what could have been at least as good as "Handmaid's Tale", the script gets lost in a ridiculous love story between Cuba Gooding Jr. and Moira Kelly which is not redeemed even by two sex scenes featuring extensive topless footage of Moira.The love story detracts from the all-too-plausible social premise of the movie that seems quite believable now: the government is using propaganda, a paramilitary "Home Guard" of thugs and forced internment of people infected with a disease in quarantine centers that are portrayed as country club resorts, but instead are more like Soviet-era prison hospitals where the patients are sent to die.The budget must not have allowed for much location shooting or set dressing, as the premise of an America in deep decline is offset by Kelly and Martha Plimpton getting on a bus and a number of other scenes shot in high-rise Manhattan that would make it appear that life was functioning normally, in direct conflict to the other, Soylent Green like street scenes and overcrowded apartments.The AIDS-like disease is also treated in a conflicting manner -- it apparently was a real disease, as Cuba Gooding's band of rebels was actually trying to aide those sick with it, and Gooding made a deliberate attempt to wear a condom before having sex with Kelly -- but we're also led to believe that the sypmtpoms, communicability and perhaps even treatability of the disease wasn't what the government said it was. It would have been more effective (and productive for the storyline) if the disease had been instead a creation of the government as an excuse to put people in a prison-like quarantine where they would die by other means.Overall, a "near-future" concept which is actually chillingly plausable in our modern times (substitute genetically engineered smallpox for the disease and terrorism detention for the quarantine...) is ruined by a bad love story and a low-budget production.If you do suffer through this movie, don't miss future Sex and the City characters David Eigenberg ("Steve") as Kelly's brother, and Willie Garson ("Stanford Blatch") as a member of Gooding's rebel gang.

I, too, thought that this was an excellent film; the first time i saw it I was on the verge of turning the TV off for lack of anything good. Although it's genre is listed as sci-fi it's not immediately apparent that it's sci-fi, which allows you to concentrate a little more on the people and production design. The grittiness is very well done, much like Max Headroom, and the characters are very thoroughly developed throughout the first two thirds of the film. The ending is particularly good - the viewer feels genuine empathy for both Moira and Cuba's characters and is left with the feeling that these are real people in an imperfect future.