![]() ![]() "This is my world," a disdainful Leary says, but you never believe him. Since the action is mostly night-rooted, the film is very dark as it moves from back alleys and abandoned freight cars, down through sewers and up to tenement rooftops. Along the way, the good guys do a lot of bonding - when they're not at each other's throats - and they get to discover something important about themselves as they move from macho bravado to mano a mano. (Estevez emerges as the leader because he's the only one with a wife and kid at home, and therefore the only one with something to live for - call it the family values plug). "We got to get out of this place," someone wisely suggests, and the rest of the film consists of Leary and Co. "You guys don't know what you're messin' with," he warns, though they get a good idea when the victim is dragged out of the camper and executed by Leary, apparently displeased with his drug runner's skimming of funds. Problems start when the suburbanites - Gooding, Emilio Estevez, Stephen Dorff and Jeremy Piven - stumble upon what they think is a hit-and-run victim curiously reluctant to accept their help. Aside from a couple of brief scenes, director Stephen Hopkins basically eliminates the neighbors, preferring to use the disintegrating neighborhood for background scenery. plays one of the four buddies, but this is essentially a white-bread production in which Denis Leary plays the heavy simply by adding a psychotic edge to his motor-mouth MTV rant. The filmmakers have made a big deal of a soundtrack that features 10 collaborations between rappers and rockers (the theme is performed by De La Soul and Teenage Fan Club), but their casting consciousness is less adventurous. Unfortunately, there's precious little tension in this cat-and-louse tale, and certainly none of the racial tension one might expect. (But if you saw "Grand Canyon" or "Bonfire of the Vanities," you knew that.) It follows the travails of a quartet of self-satisfied suburban buddies on a boys' night out to a downtown boxing match trying to dodge a traffic jam in their rented camper, they drive astray into "the ghetto." What they find is that it's an urban jungle in there, one they are ill-equipped to handle. "Judgment Night" is regrettably familiar fare. ‘Judgment Night’ (R) By Richard Harrington ![]()
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