There's a lot going on here. The cast do a pretty good job, I think, and so does director John Terlesky, making what they can of a wildly flummoxing screenplay by Fred Olen Ray. How did this script get approved? How did stars like Ice-T and Mario Van Peebles get roped into it, among others? What, exactly, is the history of this production, from start to finish? I'd be very curious to know. It's not that there's no story in 'Judgment Day,' but rather that the story is assembled something like a custom car built from with every piece stolen from a completely different make and model - bits and pieces cut from different sources, and welded together in a form that sounds like it might work in theory so long as you don't spend a single moment thinking about it.
Thus do we have elements cobbled together of a charismatic black preacher, speaking truth to power, going full Doomsday Cult; unaligned streetwise black characters who know everything about what's going on here, there, and everywhere; two competing "space defense" projects, one favored above the other with a key inexplicably being held by a former intelligence official now working as a college instructor; a felon whose past links with the preacher in ways that the screenplay cannot convincingly connect; threatening celestial objects a la Michael Bay's 'Armageddon'; and more. Early dialogue tries to have earnest, cheeky fun with matters like race relations or LGBTQ topics, but lacks the intelligence and delicate touch to make the cracks stick, so instead it just comes off as weakly borderline racist, homophobic, or transphobic. The smarter the writing tries to be (heavy verbiage delineating the past of character Matthew Reese; attempted kernels of wisdom from preacher Payne), the flimsier it is. Reese and co-lead Tyrell have dynamics that don't quite fit together, and while both have character arcs of a sort, on the crunched timeline in this film, they just seem forced. And so on, and so on, from start to finish.
I'm not even sure that the plot, as written, meaningfully connects together in terms of how the leading characters move from A to B. For what it's worth, stunts and effects look decent, and any CGI. Terlesky shows suitable capability as a director, and the cast make a sincere effort to inject something real and believable into the proceedings. The crew put in good work all around, and the climax that is mostly just an action sequence is probably the single strongest part of the feature. Truthfully, 'Judgment Day' is fairly well made for a late 90s "direct to video" release, and it's not altogether bad. It's passably enjoyable. It's enjoyable, however, provided that one just tries to accept the movie at face value, and leave it at that. If you can do so then this is still less than perfect or essential, but it's decent enough for a lazy day. If you can't, then you might be better off just passing on it altogether.
