Traveling at the Speed of Love: Judgment Night at 30

Thirty years on, I can still recall how exciting it felt to sit in the theater and watch the opening scene of Stephen Hopkins’s urban paranoia classic Judgment Night (1993). A black screen fades to blue sky as the first notes of De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub’s “Fallin’” ring out, followed by the evocative line, “Traveling at the speed of love,” before the camera descends on a lush, tree-lined suburban street.

The song sets the mood—“Hey yo kids, remember when I used to be dope?”—capturing perfectly the nostalgic suburban glory onscreen, as the camera glides across the street in slow motion, documenting a typical autumnal day in the ‘burbs: kids riding bikes through neighbor’s leaf piles, businessmen walking to their houses at the end of the workday, and a sports car pulling up to the curb.

One of our protagonists, Mike Peterson (Cuba Gooding Jr.), exits the car, looking hale and hearty and on a mission, only to be immediately distracted by a good-looking blonde walking by with her dog. Eventually, the camera finishes panning left, stopping at the home of Mike’s friend Frank Wyatt (Emilio Estevez) and “Fallin’” fades out, as the adventure begins.

This glorious opening scene, and the wildly entertaining movie that follows, have lived rent-free in my mind ever since seeing the film opening weekend, October 15, 1993. Judgment Night tells the tale of four suburban Chicago friends—Frank, Mike, Ray (Jeremy Piven), and Frank’s little brother John (Stephen Dorff)—journeying from Evanston into the heart of the city for the evening’s big boxing match. They’re traveling in style, thanks to obnoxious car salesman Ray having finagled the use of a luxury RV for the night. Stuck in gridlocked traffic, and after a road-rage confrontation with a fellow motorist, Ray exits the expressway and descends down into a rundown, desolate section of the city. While trying to find a shortcut to the arena, they accidentally hit a man who runs out in front of the RV—and that’s when the true adventure begins. What follows will test not only each man’s resolve, but also their friendships.

I’ve used the words “adventure” and “journey” so far to describe the plot of Judgment Night because the film resides in that “one crazy night” subgenre of urban thrillers alongside classics like The Warriors (1979) or Siege (1983), in which a group of protagonists fight for their lives against enemies out to kill them. Like the best films in the subgenre, Judgment Night is a relentless exercise in tension building. After the idyllic opening scene, Hopkins wastes little time plunging the four leads into a very different world than the one they’re from.

Soon, the four friends witness a murder and the killers begin hunting them through the urban jungle. Lead by Dennis Miller, the gang relentlessly chase the suburbanites through empty streets, into housing projects, and across roof tops—a treacherous ladder crawl from one towering building to another provides one of the film’s most tense and memorable scenes. The role might not seem right for Miller on paper, but he absolutely knocks it out of the park in a performance that’s both menacing and quite funny. As for Estevez, Gooding Jr, Piven, and Dorf, they have an easy, lived-in camaraderie. We believe these four have known each other forever.

During the last shot of the film, following the final confrontation, the first notes of “Fallin’” kick in once more as the camera trails behind Frank walking outside to reunite with his wife and baby daughter: “Traveling at the speed of love.” That line, which opens and closes the film, captures Frank’s journey and his motivation: he fought his way through this long, brutal night for the love of his friends, and his wife and newborn child. The screen goes black, the credits roll and the song plays on—a perfect bookend to the film’s opening shot.

After seeing Judgment Night in the theater that October night thirty years ago, I rented it frequently for the next several years, before eventually buying the VHS. These days I still watch it frequently, as it’s one of my top comfort movies. While I’ve always loved the film, for decades now many know it only through its soundtrack, which features blistering tracks from rock bands pairing with rap groups. While that certified gold album may have dwarfed the movie in public perception, the film has stood the test of time. Today, it seems obvious that Judgment Night has always been one of the best cinematic thrillers to come out of the nineties.