Film Review: Judgment Night (1993)

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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