as Teddy, Fallon's lieutenant who is executed for stealing from him, right in front of Frank, Mike, John, and Ray, thus beginning the chase Christine Harnos as Linda Wyatt, Frank's wife and John's sister-in-law, she reluctantly agrees to let Frank go to the boxing match Production Screenwriter Kevin Jarre had written the first spec script for the movie (Under its original title, "Escape") sometime around 1989 or earlier, which was based on a story idea by Richard DiLello, and producer Lawrence Gordon, who produced films like Predator (1987) and Die Hard (1988), bought it in January 1990. At the 25th anniversary screening of the film during Cinepocalypse film festival in Chicago, director Stephen Hopkins confirmed in a Q&A about how Jarre's script, which was a lot darker and more violent, went through different writers, including John Carpenter, William Wisher, Randall Wallace, and Christopher Crowe, and many different versions, which involved bikers in the desert outside L.A., and rooftop motorcycle chases. The original script was entirely re-written to the point where only Lewis Colick, one of the writers who worked on re-writes, got the final screenplay credit (Colick shares story credit with novelist Jere Cunningham). According to Hopkins, he wanted John Travolta in the lead role and Kevin Spacey in the main villain role; other actors, including Ray Liotta, Tom Cruise, Samuel L. Jackson, and Christian Slater, were either offered or had turned down roles in the film. Comedian Adam Carolla was a stand-in for one of the "bad guy" actors, Michael Wiseman. He was friends with the assistant director. It was his first foray into film. Reception Box office The movie debuted at No. 5. The film grossed a total of $12,136,938 at the US Box Office. Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 35% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. On Metacritic it has a score of 46% based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Leonard Klady of Variety wrote: "The most chilling aspect of the urban thriller "Judgment Night" is how infinitely superior its craft is to its art. 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