Judgment Night (1993)

From Universal Pictures and Largo Entertainment, Director Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2, Blown Away, Lost in Space) brings us the riveting 1993 action thriller JUDGMENT NIGHT. The film tells the story about four middle-class friends from Chicago: happily married family man Frank Wyatt (Emilo Estevez), big kid-like Mike Peterson (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), Frank’s younger brother John Wyatt (Stephen Dorff), and over-confident businessman Ray Cochran (Jeremy Piven) go on a night out on the town to a boxing match. Stuck in a heavy traffic jam en-route, the boys get off the first exit they find and to find another way to get to the match, Instead they get lost in a gang-way part of town, where they encounter four psychopathic drug dealers, led by the vicious, wise-cracking drug lord Fallon (Denis Leary), and witnessing them commit a brutal murder. When Fallon wants no witnesses, the four friends become his unwilling prey as they are mercilessly stalked by the killers throughout the hostile city streets. The film also stars Peter Greene (The Mask), rap artist Erik “Everlast” Schrody, and Michael Wiseman (Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes) as Fallon’s men Sykes, Rhodes and Travis, with Michael DeLorenzo (TV’s New York Undercover) as Teddy, Galyn Görg (Point Break) and Angela Alvarado (Freedom Writers) as overprotective women Clarissa and Rita. I was five years old when this film came out, and I would never hear about it till I was eighteen. When I saw the film’s theatrical trailer on a movie website, I wanted to see it. I finally did and I enjoyed it. Sadly it didn't do well at the box office when it was released in 1,545 theaters on October 15th, 1993 with an opening gross of $4,088,955 and remained in theaters for three weeks, ending it with a total gross of$12,136,938. Although the film takes place in Chicago, half of it was filmed in Los Angeles from October 19th, 1992 to January 13th, 1993. And as you watch the film, you might recognize L.A.’s skyline in the background in some scenes like for example: a long high crane shot of the boys running one by one. For years I’ve seen Denis Leary as his usual comedic self in such films: THE REF, DEMOLITION MAN, OPERATION DUMBO DROP, SMALL SOLDIERS, and his television show RESCUE ME, his performance as Fallon was pretty intense and he played a good bad guy. Samuel L. Jackson was the first choice for that character, but dropped out to do JURASSIC PARK instead. Alan Silvestri composed the film’s score, but some of it in the chase sequences was from the 1987 action hit film PREDATOR, for which he composed for himself. With riveting action and suspense, I consider JUDGMENT NIGHT a very entertaining thriller and I recommend it to all movie lovers.