cult film freak: JEREMY PIVEN LITERALLY DRIVING 1994'S RIDE 'JUDGEMENT NIGHT'

Jeremy Piven in JUDGEMENT NIGHT Year: 1994 Rating: **1/2

In JUDGEMENT NIGHT, token instigating/troublemaking black-sheep of drinking-buddies Jeremy Piven has provided a giant one-night-only RV for buddies Emilio Estevez, his nervous little brother Stephen Dorff and intense yet cool-headed Cuba Gooding Jr to hang out and drink in... all while watching prime night boxing on the way to front seats for the actual match...

What's funny is that, while stuck on a very important freeway traffic jam, and with drinks in hand and mobile satellite television, they could have simply cruised around and had a better time than at the place they never reach...

Cuba Gooding Jr, Stephen Dorff and Jeremy Piven in JUDGEMENT NIGHT

Taking a random off-ramp into an inner-city rabbit-hole hybrid of then-modern rap-backed gang-banger movies like TRESPASS or the post-apocalyptic MAD MAX franchise, they wind up being stalked by a ferocious group of killers, led by a constantly-lecturing Denis Leary, who got famous timidly spouting-off with chain-smoking diatribes on MTV...

He's not bad as the main bad guy, surrounded by equally vicious Irish hoods, but, realistically, being as white as most of his prey, he wouldn't quite hold up if other more superior gangs encroached where it seems only passive homeless people exist...

Denis Leary in JUDGEMENT NIGHT

And craziest of all, for a most of the picture, there are no police anywhere... the hunting-ground locations in JUDGEMENT NIGHT are just too conveniently barren and lawless...

Meanwhile, the best character is sold as the biggest jerk in Piven's Ray, who (before predictably exiting the picture way too early) should have been either more an antagonist or less obnoxious, or perhaps less important early-on because he simply outshines the other characters, with both acting and plot-importance i.e. while causing all the mayhem, the entire ride wouldn't have existed without him...

Stephen Dorff and Emilio Estevez in JUDGEMENT NIGHT

Leaving Estevez with his usual half-baked intensity more befitting a decent straight-to-video than the big screen thrill-a-minute odyssey intended... one that's become a cult movie since it originally never quite took off...

Understandably so, as this overlong yet popcorn-entertaining NIGHT has moments of adrenaline-fueled intensity while being otherwise bogged-down by an overlong sense of dread and doom, and not enough pockets of action-packed payoff involving more eclectic and creative obstacles.