Judgment Day (1999)

The opening of the movie is so illogical that it may actually explain why wrong thinking is so prevalent. Ice-T makes a good point: Do poor communities (of any race) build guns, or grow poppy plants (the basics of hard drugs)? Of course not. Ice-T then makes a bad point: He blames the white man. What? I grew up in the slums of NYC until I left at age 17 and never looked back. Our neighborhood was a mix of blacks and Puerto Ricans. Many times, as a teen, I had to step over drug addicts and bums who camped overnight on the inner steps to the 3 story building. Sometimes, I saw needles dangling down an arm. HERE is the false logic: NO one FORCED us to take drugs or murder others. And, the only way drugs become popular is if there are buying customers. No blacks or whites are FORCED to buy or to use drugs. No one is forced to pull a trigger without a legal reason. So, because the initial logic is false, the rest of the movie fails. You cannot build a home upon lies, or a good movie upon bad logic.

A bizarre amalgamation of disaster and blaxploitation thrillers which never really gels, this uneven adventure story unsurprisingly went straight to video on first release. As a science fiction disaster movie, it offers little of interest; the story behind the asteroid is barely explained and the threat itself limited to some mega-cheesy computer effects of bits of it hitting the earth and destroying various towns. Instead the plot focuses on the hunt for the cult leader by the buddy-buddy teaming of Ice-T and Suzy Amis, keeping things so small scale that the cult consists of about two people - yes, it's got that low a budget. The action sequences are few and far between, which is rather good because they always verge on silliness (this is one of those films where bad guys open fire with a dozen sub machine-guns and still fail to hit the good guys) and are still somehow routinely played out.Playing the role of an unpleasant and violent criminal, Ice-T fits into the role like a glove in a part he seems to have been born to play. His acting is good, if you can call this real acting. Suzy Amis is colourless as the FBI agent and her part largely unwritten; an aimless void at the centre of the movie. The only really good performance is from Mario Van Peebles as the mild-mannered but ruthless cult leader who believes that the asteroid is a message from God, putting in a nicely underplayed turn when he could have easily just been over the top (I'm thinking Basil Wallace as Screwface in MARKED FOR DEATH here). The scientist is played by Linden Ashby - whoever thought of that casting needs to be shot - with slightly less woodenness than your average pine tree. JUDGMENT DAY is a good example of the cheaply-made and unimaginative television-style movies pouring out of America these days; it offers a few minor thrills and interests here and there but fails as a whole through being just too mundane.

I stumbled on this movie after SportsCenter. It was on FX, so I stayed a few minutes. The cast was full of recognizable faces, including Ice-T and Mario Van Peebles, the king of B-Movies.This was definitely a B-Movie.I called up IMDb to figure out who the director was and he is an actor/director. That was obvious from the movie.The plot was predictable and it was a combo of David Koresh and Armageddon, filmed on a low budget. The movie was enjoyable and Ice-T's grimace always gives me a smile, along with his silly bad-ass lines.I don't know why Suzy Amis is attempting to act any more, since she's married to James Cameron-Titanic. She can do whatever she wants.Plenty of the actors give you the 'I know that dude' feeling. I saw a guy from the Young and Restless, another was a character actor in every military movie.Judgment Day was released in 1999, so it was probably filmed in 1998, when the Armageddon themed movies were still a hot commodity. That's the likely reason this movie was made. Still, it's an OK watch, though I did vacuum the carpet during the movie and didn't seem to miss anything.Any movie that somehow brings Chicken and Waffles into the script can't be all bad.This is definitely a late night movie watch.(Like 90% of the actors that made it big in the 1985-1992 area, Suzy Amis appeared in a bad Miami Vice episode-Heart of Darkness. It's terrible that I just saw this on TV as I was writing this review.)

This movie is alright! I've seen it a number of times. It's one of those movies that you can see a number of times and not get bored of it.Mario van Peebles and tommy Lister jr. gave good performances in my opinion. I like the idea of a religious activist believing that God had decided the world's fate and that it should be interfered with. Good special effects. I don't know why this movie didn't come out at the cinema because I like the movie. Good story. Coolio's gangster character was a brief but interesting part of the film. A few things could have been done a little better, but a good movie on the whole. Worth watching.