Judgment Night (film)

Judgment Night is a 1993 American action film directed by Stephen Hopkins. Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven and Stephen Dorff star as a group of friends on the run from a gang of drug dealers (led by Denis Leary) after they witness a murder.
Frank Wyatt, his younger brother John and their friends, Mike Peterson and Ray Cochran meet up in their suburban neighborhood to take a road trip in Ray's luxurious RV to watch a professional boxing match in Chicago for the night.
With the freeway gridlocked, Ray exits the expressway and cuts through an extremely run-down and destitute residential neighborhood. The four friends are alarmed when they accidentally hit a man named Teddy.
A long argument ensues regarding contacting the police, which Ray, who had been driving the RV when it hit Teddy, does not want to happen due to the fact the friends had been drinking during their journey. Frank makes the decision to exit the RV to help the victim.
Inspecting Teddy, they find that he has been shot and has a paper bag filled with money. The injured young man is brought into the RV so the friends can get him to a hospital.
The RV is sideswiped by a car, leaving it lodged in a narrow alleyway. Three dangerous men — Sykes, Rhodes and Travis — force their way into the window at the back of the RV and drag Teddy outside. Fallon, a local crime lord, arrives and executes Teddy for stealing the money, the execution witnessed by Frank and his brother and friends. Fallon then sets his sights to kill the four witnesses.
The friends are chased by Fallon's men into a rail yard. They hide in an old streetcar in which several homeless people are sheltering. They blackmail the four men into handing over their valuables but are heard by the pursuing gang members. The four friends and homeless people from multiple train cars flee. Fallon shoots and kills one of the homeless people, mistaking them for his quarry.
Taking refuge in an apartment building, the four friends convince a resident to call the police but Fallon and his men arrive at the complex, going door to door terrorizing the occupants to hand over the four friends if they were inside.
The resident demands the four friends to leave immediately as their presence in her home is putting her and her baby as well as her roommates lives in grave danger. The roommate takes some pity and tells the four friends that there is an escape route to another building via the roof.
The friends use a ladder to cross over an alley onto the other rooftop but are pursued by Fallon and his men. Ray stays behind and tries to bribe the drug gang into letting them go. Fallon, disgusted by Ray's tactics and privileged upbringing, throws Ray from the roof, killing him.
The trio are chased into the sewers by Fallon and his henchmen. Mike shoots and kills Sykes, allowing them to escape. Discovering Sykes' body, a comment made by Travis annoys Fallon and he drowns Travis in a fit of rage.
The trio then break into a swap meet, hoping to summon the police by setting off the building's alarm and are arrested by two security guards. Fallon and Rhodes arrive and kill the guards as the trio hide in the store. Rhodes and Mike engage in a shootout that kills Rhodes but leaves Mike wounded. John retrieves Mike, but Fallon shoots John in the leg. The three friends make their way to a bathroom where Frank tends to their wounds. Frank leaves to try to get help but spots Fallon, who is about to discover John and Mike.
Frank shouts out, causing Fallon to search for him. A fight ensues where Frank ultimately overpowers Fallon and throws him off a ledge to his death.
Police and paramedics arrive, taking Mike and John to a hospital where they are expected to survive their wounds. Frank then exits the building to his waiting wife.
The project had been in the works for several years when screenwriter Kevin Jarre had written the first spec script for the movie (under its original title, "Escape") sometime around 1989 or earlier, which was based on a story idea by Richard DiLello and producer Lawrence Gordon, who produced films like Predator (1987) and Die Hard (1988), bought it in January 1990, as one of a few film projects for his production company, Largo Entertainment.
At the 25th anniversary screening of the film during Cinepocalypse film festival in Chicago, director Stephen Hopkins said that Jarre's script, which was a lot darker and more violent, was one of several scripts commissioned by the producers, with many different writers, including John Carpenter, William Wisher, Randall Wallace, and Christopher Crowe all writing a draft, some of the different script versions involved bikers in the desert outside L.A. and rooftop motorcycle chases, in the same interview at Cinepocalypse, Hopkins further stated: "I was given a lot of scripts, and it was quite a long process, we wanted to work hard to get it right".
The final script would be written by Lewis Colick, based on a story Colick had co-written with novelist Jere Cunningham. The script would undergo more work when screenwriter Larry Ferguson was hired to do rewrites on the script.
According to Hopkins, he wanted John Travolta in the lead role and Kevin Spacey in the main villain role; other actors, including Ray Liotta, Tom Cruise, Samuel L. Jackson, and Christian Slater, were either offered or had turned down roles in the film.
Comedian Adam Carolla was a stand-in for one of the "bad guy" actors, Michael Wiseman. He was friends with the assistant director. It was his first foray into film.
Filming took place in Chicago, Illinois, primarily at night, in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. According to Hopkins, the studio was so taken aback by the bleak tone of the dailies that they thought the crew were using a matte painting.
Hopkins further mentioned that when they were filming the scene where Ray (Jeremy Piven) is confronted by Fallon (Denis Leary), a shooting had occurred near the set, and as a result the Army came in and temporarily shut production down.
The movie debuted at No. 5. The film grossed a total of $12,136,938 at the US box office.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 38% based on 21 reviews and an average rating of 4.2/10. On Metacritic it has a score of 46% based on reviews from 11 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Leonard Klady of Variety wrote, "The most chilling aspect of the urban thriller Judgment Night is how infinitely superior its craft is to its art. This is an exceedingly well directed, cleverly filmed and edited, tension-filled affair. It is also a wholly preposterous, muddled, paranoid's view of the inner-city nightmare where the slightest misstep is sure to have a fateful result." Richard Harrington of The Washington Post felt the movie was "regrettably familiar fare" and said, "The filmmakers have made a big deal of a soundtrack that features 11 collaborations between rappers and rockers (...), but their casting consciousness is less adventurous."
A soundtrack for the film, titled Judgment Night: Music from the Motion Picture (featuring rock and rap collaborations), was released the same year. The score for the film, composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri, is fully orchestral. Silvestri previously collaborated with Hopkins on Predator 2.
In 2005, Intrada released a complete version of Silvestri's orchestral score, containing two rejected tracks that he composed with electronic synthesized elements.
All tracks composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri
Opening montage song "Fallin'" Song by De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub