(source: tmdb.org)

Many Hollywood films use relatively simple premise of people making wrong turn and ending in a whole world of trouble. That includes Judgment Night, 1993 action film directed by Stephen Hopkins. Protagonist, played by Emilio Estevez, is Frank Wyatt, young and dedicated family from Chicago suburb who is looking forward for rare opportunity for night out with his younger brother John (played by Stephen Dorff) and two best friends – Mike Peterson (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Ray Cochran (played by Jeremy Piven). Their plan is to attend boxing match, but it goes awry when huge camping car Ray has rented for occasion gets stuck in traffic. Ray, fearing that they will be late for the spectacle, decides to make a detour and try getting shortcut through what appears extremely rough part of the city. They begin to regret their decision when vehicle apparently bumps into something and men discover Teddy (played by Michael De Lorenzo), member of local drug dealing gang which was apparently shot. His boss Fallon (played by Denis Leary) appears on the scene and executes the man and, after seeing the murder, Frank and his friends realise that they will be next because Fallon doesn’t want any witnesses. With police and phones nowhere to be found in huge and seemingly desolate neighbourhood, four men must use all of their ingenuity to survive the night and reach safety.

When Judgment Night appeared in cinemas, it was greeted with poor reviews, many of them comparing it with John Boorman’s classic action thriller Deliverance. Idea to switch remote mountain areas with inner city and murderous rednecks with drug dealers apparently didn’t warm critics’ hearts who apparently preferred that the issues of social divisions within urban America be handled in more serious films. Lewis Colick, author of the script which went through many rewrites, tried to remove any potentially controversial content by making band of protagonists multi-racial, while the dealers are white. Judgment Night nevertheless flopped at the box office, but, looking from today’s perspective, such fate wasn’t deserved. Stephen Hopkins, a very experienced director specialised in action and horror genre, directs film with great skill, delivering couple of very impressive action scenes, especially during the final showdown. He is aided by a solid cast that does good job in rather one-dimensional and cliched roles. Emilio Estevez is more than adequate as the group member who becomes leader for the simple reason of having family and additional motive of coming home alive. Cuba Gooding Jr., although slightly overacting at times, very convincingly portrays man who starts as voice of reason only to later develop irrational and potentially fatal bloodlust. Jeremy Piven is also good in the role of most yuppie-like member of the group whose ultimate fate is relatively easy to guess. Denis Leary, on the other hand, is not that impressive in the role of villain. Hopkins is, on the other hand, also helped by solid music score by Alan Silvestri, although some cinephiles might recognise too much motives from his work on Predator. Main problem for Judgment Night is poor pacing, especially at the beginning and middle section, and the film could have been much better if trimmed for twenty minutes or so. While some of today’s viewers might have problems accepting premise that doesn’t look credible in world, which unlike early 1990s, didn’t feature omnipresent cell phones, Judgment Night still functions as generally unpretentious and watchable piece of action cinema.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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It seems as though this movie was made so that the soundtrack could get released and even thought I thought the soundtrack was pretty much crap as well, i hope it make enough money to make up for the loss that the movie itself made at the box office.

I love Denis Leary. I really wanted to see him in more films and while he does have a few under his belt, for the most part he is just a stand-up comedian who was really popular in the early 90's. Leary Plays to role of "Fallon," a drug lord of sorts that ends up pursuing the normal suburban guys who just happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong time.

While Leary's acting is well-done there is just something not too believable about him being a respected boss in the hood. Probably because he is likely 130 lbs if he is soaking wet and wearing a backpack. Anyway, back to the story.

A group of suburban middle-class dudes venture into the town for a boxing match in an expensive RV. Most of these guys either were then or are now very accomplished actors: Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Stephen Dorf, and Jeremy Piven - who is one of my favorite almost A-list actors, ever.

Locked in traffic and in danger of missing the boxing match they were heading to, they take an alternate route (this is LOOONG before google maps) and end up in a bad part of town. They accidentally end up being witnesses to a murder and are forced to spend the remainder of the night running from Fallon (Leary) and his gang.

It isn't an inventive storyline by any means and of course the suburbanites emerge victorious - but you don't need to consider that a spoiler because it is evident that it will end up that way just based on who is in the movie and the time-period / studios it was released from.

This movie is a muddled mess from about 20 minutes in. I lived in major cities in the USA and even the "bad parts of town" are not this lawless. These areas are presented as being completely abandoned by government and just left to fend for themselves. There are troubled areas in all countries, including USA, but none like this.

The entire premise is preposterous but i suppose if we are just to completely forget everything we know about real life this movie can be considered reasonably entertaining. I suggest you skip this one though.

The other part of this movie was the much ballyhooed soundtrack which featured artists from completely different genres such as metal mixing with rap in order to make a groundbreaking album! yeah, that was crap too. There is a reason why these genres don't cross over.... because they don't work together for the most part.

Judgment Night

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