The Re-Visit: Judgment Night
THE RE-VISIT: JUDGMENT NIGHT
By Steve Wood
Let’s see, it’s the early 90’s, you have Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Stephen Dorff, Jeremy Piven, and Dennis Leary, what else is there to ask for? How about an awesome “urban survival” movie filled with tension and realistic horror?
Ray Cochran (Piven) has just bought a huge RV, with the intentions of bringing his friends to a boxing match downtown. Instead of dealing with traffic, they decide to take a shortcut and exit the freeway, man oh man was this a bad idea.
As night falls, a pedestrian is trying to cross the street as the RV slaps into him, this is the beginning of a night these guys will never forget. What follows is anyone’s worst nightmare: witnessing a murder while your vehicle is broken down, and the bad guys see you.
Enter Dennis Leary, with his fast talking, badass persona he was doing in standup comedy, only this time turn the tough guy up to 11, and make him a ruthless killer. In his crew, we have Peter Greene; also known as Zed from Pulp Fiction, and Everlast, who was still with House of Pain at the time. You really couldn’t put together a better crew of lowlifes at the time, and holy hell do they cause some shit.
When our good guys and bad guys go back and forth throughout the night, bullets fly and someone is thrown from a roof. The actors all bring their A game in this one, and it really is fun to watch. This is one of those movies where you really want the good guys to pull out of this mess, but we see time and time again they’re almost there, but just can’t quite get to a safe place. They’re in an area where seemingly everyone stays inside at night, and police are non-existent.
You can’t help but relate to these guys, Frank Wyatt – the family man, and this was all his idea, Mike Peterson – the sports guy, who couldn’t be any more hyped up for the fight, Ray Cochran – a slick salesman who thinks his mouth can get him out of any situation. Lastly we have John Wyatt, Frank’s little brother, who no one but Frank actually likes, but was invited to come along.
These guys will learn a lot about each other on this night, but only some will come out still standing.
I was only 9 years old when this movie came out, so I’m not too sure of its popularity at that time, but in my 20’s I really never saw this movie being mentioned. It’s never on cable or the movie channels, which is a shame!
elmariachi
September 24, 2013 @ 12:12 pm
Remember really digging this flick. And the soundtrack is pretty damn good
steve wood
September 24, 2013 @ 2:37 pm
It’s one of those movies, for me at least, that I’ll watch whenever I’m browsing through the channels. But I haven’t seen this on TV for a LONG ass time.