Judgment Night

source: Judgment Night

Great movie!The cast is great and they act great!It is an action packed thriller and you never know what is going to happen next! Great music by Alan Silvestri and great direction by Stephen Hopkins!I love this film!

take a wrong turn.just one wrong turn.and end up on the bad side of some not so savory characters.from there we get chase after chase as theses guys try to stay ahead of the bad guys and stay alive.this is a really exciting action packed movie.it had me on the edge of my seat a few times.and the acting,the acting was top notch.Jeremy Piven,Cuba Gooding Jr.Stephen Dorrf,Erik Schrody,Michael Wiseman are all really good.incidentally,Schrody is/was a member of once popular rap group House of Pain.he later released a solo album under the name Everlast,called Whitey Ford Sings the blues.anyway...everyone one i just mentioned did excellent work in this film.but for me,Emile Estevez and Peter Greene(Under Siege 2,The Usual Suspects,Permanent Midnight)were standouts.the movie itself is high octane excitement that doesn't let up until the end.it's a movie better watched late at night,with the lights off.for me,the verdict on Judgment Night is a 9/10

Or you may end up in a bad action movie like Judgment Night. Four middle class would be bad boys take a wrong exit on the freeway and end up in the Super Bad part of town. Their luxury recreational vehicle can provide them no protection from the wisecracks of lead bad guy Denis Leary, who must pursue them to the ends of the Earth (or the end of this movie, whichever comes first) in order to cover up his heinous crimes and his uninspired bon mots. Believe me, you'll be rooting for him to rub out these suburban nimrods.

JUDGMENT NIGHT is a movie featuring an ensemble cast who find themselves enduring a night from hell when they're pursued by a vengeful street gang with murder in mind. As it's directed by Stephen Hopkins, who made PREDATOR 2 and THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, it has potential to be good, but sadly it comes a cropper before long and never lives up to that early promise. The problem with the film is the story, or lack of it. Okay, so the setup is halfway decent, but at around the halfway mark things really start to fall apart and it becomes just a straightforward chase flick with an us-vs-them mentality. Sadly, the lethargic and badly-handled action sequences, involving shoot-outs and fist-fights, are nowhere near good enough to make up for the lack of a decent narrative, making this an entirely forgettable movie when it comes down to it. One of the most interesting things about the production is the cast, half of whom would go on to greater glory. Stephen Dorff and Cuba Gooding Jr. are two of the youthful stars; the former is effectively edgy but the latter's acting is so cheesy that you wonder how he found later fame and fortune. Jeremy Piven is better, but the presence of Emilio Estevez reminds you of why he never made it big; he has zero screen presence. The bad guys are more interesting, although the characterisation is slimmer. Denis Leary is the charismatic chief villain, but I found his endless threats became pretty routine before long and I was dying to see someone off him. Much better is the entirely underrated Peter Greene (PULP FICTION), who SHOULD have been the main bad guy because he's excellently slimy, as ever, and indeed the best thing in the whole movie.

Very interesting and compelling premise (four friends lost amidst a dangerous Chicago suburb who are being stalked after witnessing a murder). The pace of the film never slows a bit. Great performances by all actors, specially Leary. Highly recommended

Since seeing this film I've never been comfortable with Denis Leary as a comedian because he's so damn convincing as the cold-hearted bad guy in this. I think he's a great actor but this is the movie to see him in as it's A. His best performance and B. One of the best villains ever in movies. Leary plays Fallon, a dangerous criminal from Chicago's bad side. And when four middle class pals from the quiet suburbs cross him and witness a murder a chase across derelict landscapes follows. The spoon-fed quartet are way out of their comfort zone and have no idea how to navigate the ghetto or deal with its dwellers. Peter Greene, an actor always like to see, plays Sykes, one of Fallon's cohorts as well as Everlast from the rap group House of Pain as Rhodes. They sure do make a threatening impression. Judgment Night kind of comes across as a modern, urban Deliverance. There are many similarities between them but Judgment Night clearly has more excitement. Estevez (who was cast very late after Tom Cruise and Christian Slater turned down the lead role), Gooding Jnr, Piven and Dorff play well off each other and Piven especially seems to really get into the whiny runt of his character. Though the editors really should have cut down the in-fighting and petty bickering between the quartet as it often slows the film down to a complete stop. Director Stephen Hopkins (who also did Predator 2 and Blown Away) uses creeping camera movements and neo-noir lighting to provoke multiple eerie moments as well as a great deal of tension. Slow-mo and warped sound effects are also used to great effect in the finale. Alan Silvestri's score is also one of his best, alternating between several different moods. His first score (electronic based) was rejected by Hopkins but that difficult decision proved be a good judgment (ha!) as the end result is one of the film's best features. Judgment Night is certainly an overlooked tour-de-force and is a brilliant action film with fine performances all round, but Leary completely and utterly steals the show.

What an amazing cast with all the potential to make this a memorable flick. Peter Green in particular is fabulously sinister, but was sadly under-exploited by a country mile - what a pity. Denis Leary as usual delivered perfection and what a complete disaster this movie would have been without him. It started kinda OK and then slowly slid downhill all the way. The overall plot had potential, but it failed to hit the mark: far, far too many unlikely scenarios and too many loose ends. By the time we reached the ending it was obvious the screenwriter/director had run out of ideas. What a shame. I like my movies to be believable, I don't like shouting at the characters to do what they should/would be doing if this wasn't the movies. Too often, the chance to build tension and suspense was lost with the urge to inject quirky humor. Perhaps it's worth the watch in the hope that it might not be as poor as I claim, but you can forget any ideas of a second glance.

The main reason, and if I'm honest probably also the only one, why I watched this movie was because Emilio Estevez and Cuba Gooding Jr. were in it. I didn't exactly expect the best movie I had seen in years, but with these two actors, I at least expected to see a decent movie. But I'm afraid I'll have to change my mind on that one. This was a very disappointing movie. The story seems to be OK, at least in the beginning when you see four guys going to a boxing match. They don't go with a normal car like other people would do, they take a huge camper. But OK, no problem with that. As long as it serves the movie, I can live with it... and it does, because when they get completely stuck in a traffic jam and don't seem to find a way to pass some cars quickly, they decide to leave the highway and try an alternative route trough a neighborhood that doesn't look all too inviting. The four friends start thinking of going back to the highway when all a sudden they hit something or someone. When they stop they see a man lying on the ground and their first reaction is to call 911. But the driver starts to freak out (he has been drinking, he doesn't know if he's well insured...) and they decide to take him with them in the camper and to bring him to a hospital. And then all the misery starts. Not only has the man been shot, the ones who did it are now chasing the four friends... At first I still could live with the idea that they had left the highway, got into trouble... but as the movie kept going on, it annoyed me enormously. The bad guys always seemed to know where the four friends were going and never gave up the chase, the good guys always made the most stupid decisions possible,... And of course the good ones have to act like heroes and yes people get killed on both sides, but in the end the good will always prevail, right? If there is one positive thing that I can say about this movie, than it must be something about the acting. I'm not saying it was the best of the best, but it was decent and quite believable. Nevertheless, it doesn't save this movie and that's why I can only give it a 5/10.

Soundtrack for this movie is one of the first CDs I got and one of the most worn out ones. But it took me more than two decades to finally see the movie too. I suppose I was dodging it because of pretty much bad reviews and, once again, I missed the good movie. OK, it's not masterpiece, but for an action drama it is above average. And music kicks ass! 7/10