Metacritic reviews

The movie moves at a relentless clip, and the characters react intelligently enough to their situation to make it crackling good entertainment -- with bite. [15 Oct 1993, p.G5]

Given the opportunities for gratuitous mayhem, director Stephen Hopkins, working from a script by Lewis Colick, is reasonably restrained. He’s aided by his cinematographer, Peter Levy, who gets some real variation out of what might have been undifferentiated darkness.

A tight, energetic sleeper in the action-adventure genre, manages to pack a few anti-machismo sentiments into an otherwise brawny tale.

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.

Judgment Night is regrettably familiar fare.

Judgment Night is almost completely lacking in conviction and originality. But Leary does a fair Dennis Hopper imitation, Gooding does his best with an insulting role, and the ending is witty enough not to give us the undying villain it leads us to expect. [15 Oct 1993, p.D27]

Decent performances from Emilio Estevez and Denis Leary can't rescue this movie from its weak screenplay and predictable story. [21 Oct 1993, p.7G]

Perhaps the ultimate "Judgment" comes from Estevez, who observes: "Nothing about tonight makes sense."

With some of the overlong running time snipped, Judgment Night might have been palatable. As it stands, however, the best judgment I can pass on this movie is an exceedingly harsh one.

Basically a rehashing of previous genre films, Hopkins borrows heavily from such superior efforts as Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (minus that film's gang motif, natch) hoping that no one will notice.