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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Daybreak is an HBO drama based on Alan Bowne's acclaimed off-Broadway play Beirut. The play is a taut, two-character allegory about AIDS that takes place in one dismal room on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The film has been "opened-out" into an apocalyptic, romantic action-thriller. New York City is a 1984-style fascist nightmare steeped in poverty and ridden with plague. Bands of armed officers under the rubric Operation Helping Hand roam the streets rounding up Positives, who are tattooed and quarantined in filthy hellholes. Blue, a poor but pretty young woman (sweet-faced Moira Kelly), stumbles onto a secret resistance group that rescue Positives to give them compassionate care. Blue falls in love with their courageous leader, Torch, powerfully played by Cuba Gooding Jr. The play focuses on the relationship between these star-crossed lovers and the film's best moments do the same. Neither the play nor the film ever mentions AIDS by name, but it is clear that in both cases AIDS is the plague in question and the theme is the hysteria that AIDS can generate. The horrible future these dramas foresaw did not come to pass. Since they were written, great medical strides have been made that have changed the face of AIDS. But fear and misinformation about the disease persist. AIDS remains a major health crisis worldwide and Daybreak is a powerful film that deserves to be seen. --Laura Mirsky
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not As Good As I Thought,
By
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This review is from: Daybreak (DVD)
As always Cuba Gooding is excellent in his performance in this movie. However, the content of the movie is not what I expected. I know this movie has been around for a while but this is my first time seeing it. I would not suggest that this is one of Goodings best performances. I did not like the ending at all.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Daybreak,
This review is from: Daybreak (DVD)
I saw this movie late at night when I was unable to sleep. Cuba Gooding Jr.and Moira Kelly were selected beautifully in the roles of the starcrossed lovers. As for the comment above, referring to the situation having not come to pass and that there are treatments,this is true. However, This is about AIDS despite the fact the word was never uttered but expressed in many other ways. The movie is set in the future,and let us keep in mind the AIDS virus continues to mutate. Can we say that in the future this may NOT come to pass? Despite the bleak way of life and the "Big Brother environment",I cannot help but feel that this movie comes across as hopeful, to the extent, that at the conclusion the girl(Blue) quite literally takes on the job of her lover, thereby, ( not lost on me) picking up the "Torch" both literally and figuratively. He (her lover's name was Torch)could handle living his life to its horrible conclusion, alone and sick with the illness that plagued him, if he knew she was out there living and continuing to keep the cause alive. Compassion and caring would not die with him as he made the sacrifice for the two of them by sending her away instead of keeping her to himself. She, instead, would serve the greater good and take care of others being able to help more than just himself. He could take heart in knowing he did not die in vain, as he had groomed her into the job himself.What was the cause you might ask? Setting up ambushes of shipments of the sick being transferred to quarantined areas so that it was possible to offer comfort to the sick and dying. Cures were not being researched. It was easier to send away the sick and tattoo them with a "P"for postive, that cannot be removed, than to research treatments and cures, supply funding, and educate the masses on the disease. The greatest hurt was in knowing that Blue herself had, unwittingly, betrayed Torch and killed his "son" Willie. Blue was naive and thought her friend~who had felt snubbed since Torch came along~would not betray her. The friend had disclosed the information Blue gave her in trust, to the authorities. Now Clue has to pay the price in the loss of her love(Torch), Willie(The boy she was treating as her own son) and her former existence. No longer was she oblivious to the true cruelty to those sick and needing compassion and respect instead of warehousing and degradation until they died. By the way any of you who think "They" are really working on a cure for AIDS and HIV are living in the same state of mind as our heroine of the movie. They are looking for ways to manage the disease. Not cures. There is no money in curing diseases. pharmaceutical companies are making a killing off of this and other diseases, literally.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moira Kelly at one of her best,
By Silver Dream ! (Szczecin, POLAND) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Daybreak [VHS] (VHS Tape)
The movie itself is a kind of the early nineties' AIDS pandemonium projected onto the Orwell's visions of 1984. Mentally nothing really challenging although romantic (as 1984 book for a big part of it) and somewhat inspiring. But... if you like Moira Kelly (as I do) - this is the one you shouldn't miss (beside "The Cutting Edge" of course)! Three stars for the movie, five stars for Moira and four for the others - averages to four at my scale. This means: go for it.
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