Daybreak

This 1993 movie is one of a long line of dystopian (also called "awful warning") stories. In this case one of the key ideas that make dystopias interesting--a fascist government using paranoia to keep the masses in line--is swamped by the romance between Cuba Gooding and Moira Kelly. Of course there is a place for love in such a story--remember Winston Smith and Julia in Nineteen Eight-Four--but in Daybreak the love story eventually overwhelms everything else, and ideas go out the window.

The treatment of the disease that is supposedly rampant in this near-future world is ambiguous. No, the disease doesn't seem like AIDS, but it's unclear just what it is, how much of the population is afflicted by it, and whether or not it is really deadly. At times, you get the sense that the government invented the disease to spread fear among the people, but, then again, clearly some of the people in the movie are sick. It's all sort of confusing.

Cuba Gooding's character is one-dimensional. At first he's very angry and refuses to have anything to do with Moira Kelly. Then, aw shucks, he is forced to admit he really loves her. Moira Kelly's character is semi-believable. To me, however, the really interesting character is that played by Martha Plimpton, who makes the character come alive and has a very interesting face in the bargain.

Somewhere in this movie is a good idea that never manages to break free.

While the movie is interesting, this is as close to propaganda filming as I have seen this late in the century. If michael moore made dramas, this would be one.

The US is a crumbling third world country, and the local street gangs are part of the government's fascist enforcement. Can you say Nazi? If this were a blog, they would have envoked Godwyn's law and be done with it.

OK, so Cuba gets sick and has to go to a "camp" where the government will make him very comfortable while they look for a cure. But everyone knows thats not what happens. Can you say "Concentration Camp" and "AIDS"?

This movie was made to make a point about how AIDS is killing people and the government is not doing enough, but instead it comes off like the psycho nut liberal fanatic at a party that you wish you hadn't started a conversation with.

That said, it is certainly memorable, and the movie, while intentionally frustrating, is interesting enough to watch... if you can keep from rolling your eyes ever five minutes.

This is a very excellent and overlooked HBO movie. Set in the future where HIV positive people are sent to live in concentration camps and probably exterminated in the near future. Cuba and Moria Kelly are excellent as the lead characters. There's also a really hot love scene between Cuba and Moria, which is interrupted by a kid. This is a very excellent movie of what might happen in an intolerent Texas future.

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.

In a near future in New York, the (north) American society is ruled by a totalitarian government. In order to control AIDS, the HIV positive citizens are tattooed with a P on the chest and sent to quarantine.

When the teenager Blue (Moira Kelly) accompanies her best friend Laurie (Martha Plimpton) to a government clinic for examination, they are advised on the street by the boy Willie (Amir Williams) to not go to the place. While in the waiting room, Blue and Laurie witness the treatment of the staff to an old lady and they decide to get out from the clinic. They are chased by security guards but Willie brings them to his brother Torch (Cuba Gooding Jr.) that hides and protects the girls.

Blue learns that Torch is the leader of an underground movement of resistance and the government quarantine is a sham and the patients are left to die in starvation. Blue falls in love with Torch and joins the movement. When Torch is arrested by the police, he is submitted to a test and finds that he is positive. He is sent to quarantine and Blue tries to find a way to meet him.

"Daybreak" is HBO film with a promising beginning, with a society controlled by a fascist government and a group of resistance that helps the sick people, giving dignity to them. The idea of resistance against a government is not original, but is usually engaging. Unfortunately there is a twist and the story changes to an annoying melodrama between the negative Blue and the positive Torch. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Amanhecer Sem Futuro" ("Dawning without Future")