Judgment Night (film)

Judgment Night is a 1993 American action crime thriller film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven and Stephen Dorff as a group of friends on the run from a gang of drug dealers (led by Denis Leary) after they witness a murder.
Plot.
Frank Wyatt, his brother John, their friends Mike Peterson and Ray Cochran drive 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 a poor residential neighborhood. The four friends are alarmed when they accidentally hit a man named Teddy. Inspecting Teddy, they find that he has been shot and has a paper bag filled with money.
The RV is sideswiped by a car, leaving it lodged in a narrow alleyway. Three gangsters — Rhodes, Travis, and Sykes — force their way into the RV and drag Teddy outside. Fallon, a local crime lord, arrives and executes Teddy for stealing the money, then decides to kill the four witnesses. The friends are chased by Fallon's hoods 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 hoods. The four friends flee as Fallon kills 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 the hoods arrive at the complex. The resident tells the four friends that there is an escape route to another building via the roof. They use a ladder to cross over to the other rooftop but are pursued by Fallon and his hoods. Ray stays behind and tries to bribe the gangsters 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, Travis tries to leave but is killed in a rage by Fallon.
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. A fight ensues and Frank 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.
Production.
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. At the 25th anniversary screening of the film during Cinepocalypse film festival in Chicago, director Stephen Hopkins confirmed in a Q&A about how Jarre's script, which was a lot darker and more violent, went through different writers, including John Carpenter, William Wisher, and Christopher Crowe, and many different versions, which involved bikers in the desert outside L.A., and rooftop motorcycle chases. The original script was entirely re-written to the point where only Lewis Colick, one of the writers who worked on re-writes, got the final screenplay credit (Colick shares story credit with novelist Jere Cunningham).
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.
Reception.
Box office.
The movie debuted at No. 5. The film grossed a total of $12,136,938 at the US Box Office.
Critical response.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 35% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. On Metacritic it has a score of 46% based on reviews from 11 critics, 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 stated "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."
Soundtrack and score.
A soundtrack for the film titled "Judgment Night: Music From The Motion Picture" was released the same year on September 14, 1993. The score for the film, composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri, is completely orchestral. Silvestri previously collaborated with Hopkins in "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.
Score album track listing.
All tracks composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri