ITL, go ahead and watch it so I don't have to, then critique it here. You needn't be so honest that you publicly confess you actually LOL'd. You can save that for your pastor. You can just tell us you were tempted.
Or did you mean it hurts to laugh so hard?
I tried to watch "Judgment" last night. I lasted about 35 minutes. The pain. Oh, the pain.
The movie is apparently the fourth in a series about the end times. We are about 2 years into the tribulation. The anti-Christ, a man named Franco Mackaloosa (and openly called "the messiah" or "your eminence") has brought about world peace, created a one world government, O.N.E., or One Nation Earth, instituted the mark for buying and selling, and is persecuting Christians. The World Leader of 8 billion people has a cramped, spartan office where he has hung a large portrait of himself on the wall behind his desk because that's what Evil Dictators do for interior design. He enjoys tapping on the side of his aquarium to scare the fish. (The bastard!)
Rather than execute the leader of the Christian underground, Hannah, by guillotine he's hatched a plot to put her on trial on world TV (yes, world TV, not national TV) to gin up his popularity and further denigrate Christians. She's to be tried for hate crimes against humanity. The entire trial has been scripted and the outcome predetermined. I guess they figured they should have a trial before the execution.
Corbin Bernsen (who played L.A. Law's smarmy pretty boy divorce attorney Arnie Becker in the 80's) is the defense lawyer, Mitch Somebody. I had unfounded high hopes he might add some gravitas to the movie. Turns out Mitch's dad was the pastor of The Living Word church in a previous movie. In one of the few competently made scenes in the movie, Bernsen goes through a range of emotional face-making as he longingly looks at the boarded up remains of his dad's old church. (BTW, Mitch has taken the mark of the beast.) I admit I had a teensy-weensy passing flash of interest in this sub plot development of conflict within Mitch.
Mr. T takes another stab at trying to be an actor and plays a Christian freedom fighter putting together a team of terrorists to free Hannah from going on trial. As usual, he barks his lines in a gruff manner and overdoes his two facial expressions. One of his fellow terrorists, er, freedom fighters, objects to his plan to use violence, stating "you're a believer now, time to start acting like one." <sigh>
As part of his plan to recruit people Mr T approaches a pair of starving street people, one of whom just asked the other, "if I only get one 6 put on my hand will they let me buy a pizza?" [See what I mean about bad dialogue?]
The set for the trial is laughable. Contemporary modern art style, all white molded plastic with a spectator gallery ringing the perimeter one floor above the courtroom. That's so the spectators can rain boos and throw things down at the participants.
The prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the judge have brought their scripts and set them out in front of them on their tables. They consult the scripts, turning pages as they go along. I guess this is a visual cue to us dumb moviegoers which shows everyone in this sham trial is on the same page. Naturally, this coordinated page turning of papers by the judge and opposing lawyers does not look suspicious at all to the billions of people viewing on TV.
In her opening statement the prosecutor brings along a canoe paddle and uses it as a prop to show how the whole world is rowing in unison towards a better future since His Eminence brought world peace but that Christians want to destroy the paddle and go back to the old ways.
Just then a man wielding a knife bursts into the courtroom and tries to attack Hannah. Of course he is stopped by security just in the nick of time. [The trial of the millennium and a guy with a knife gets through security?]
Mitch gets up in court to give the defense's opening statement. He starts to go off script which prompts the judge to call for a recess. In judge's chambers Mitch explains he's going to shift the focus of the trial from Hannah to Jesus Himself! He's going to put God on trial! Coincidentally, the anti-Christ is also in the room and he agrees to this plan.
At this point my hand snapped up the remote and I exited the movie.
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