| Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s new action vehicle End
of Days seemed like it went on for days. The
mindless thriller - Arnie’s first in two
years - takes place during the final four days of
the upcoming millennium and feels like it was
shot in real-time. The premise is that Satan
needs to impregnate a "chosen" female
before the clock strikes 12 in order to be
released from his prison. They didn’t
specifically say it, but I think the prison may
be Joliet. The opening credits
utilize every bad religious cliché they could
dig up – fire, snakes, spooky singing and
Arabic text. The film kicks off in 1979 Vatican
City, Rome, where an astrological event known as
"The Eye of God" is seen by an
underling of the Pope. The presence of the
"Eye" means that somewhere in the
world, a girl is to be born that will, in twenty
years’ time, be impregnated by Satan. The
Pontiff dispatches men to find the girl (yeah,
right) and keep her from evil for a couple of
decades. Sounds reasonable, right? Six hours
later, the "chosen" infant girl is born
in New York City, the evilest place in the world
in 1979.
Flash
to present-day (December 28, 1999, to be exact)
where Satan returns to Earth, taking over the
body of a Wall Street banker (Gabriel Byrne, who
just played a priest in Stigmata) in the
men’s room of a posh NYC eatery. Despite his
new form (and his invincibility), Satan still
feels the need to hire protection services to
venture around the Big Apple. Enter Jericho Cane
(Schwarzenegger, Batman & Robin) a
drunk ex-cop (isn’t Bruce Willis supposed to
get these roles?) with a funny sidekick called
Chicago (Kevin Pollak, She’s All That).
They both have great names, but each pales in
comparison to Satan.
The
"chosen" girl (Robin Tunney, Niagara,
Niagara), now twenty, doesn’t show up
until thirty minutes into the film. Her name is
Christine York (get it – Christ-ine?). Both
of her parents are dead and she’s been
having strange visions for most of her life and,
as a result, pops pills and sees a shrink (Udo
Kier, Blade). As a side note, if your
therapist looks like Udo Kier – run for your
life. One of the visions involves a creepy
cross-eyed subway freak that tells her,
"He’s coming, and he’s going to
f--- you!" before shattering like a frozen
Robert Patrick in T2. Why this person has
not yet been cast in a Harmony Korine film is
beyond me.
One of
the catches in Satan’s plan is that he has
to conceive between 11:00 PM and 12:00 AM on New
Year’s Eve. What are the odds that she is
even ovulating at that time? Arnie even gets off
a great line, rhetorically asking if Satan’s
plot is designed around Eastern Standard Time.
The writers laugh it off with some quick blurb
about Gregorian calendars being created for this
very reason. Plus, you’ve gotta figure that
Satan really needs to start working on the girl
at around 11:40 at the latest. He seems like the
kind of guy who likes to sweet-talk the ladies. I
figure ten minutes of foreplay, five for the
actual "act," and then five minutes of
cuddle-time.
End
of Days does have a few cool visuals (from
special effects wiz Stan Winston) and one
legitimately scary scene, but that was lifted
from Se7en (and Kevin Spacey was a much
scarier villain than the Devil, anyway). Speaking
of Spacey, they also lifted his
"Satan’s greatest trick was convincing
the world he didn’t exist" line from The
Usual Suspects. Satan’s giant head of
fire (an effect ruined by the trailer) is cool,
but we’ve already seen it in The Mummy
(and it wasn’t that great to begin with).
Also disappointing was Satan’s non-human
form which, when revealed at the end, seemed a
lot like Buffy’s principal in the season
finale last season. The pre-sold "modern
rock" soundtrack was all but missing from
the film.
Directed
by Peter Hyams (The Relic) and written by
Andrew W. Marlowe (Air Force One), Days
features an incredibly hammy performance by
Schwarzenegger, who, in one scene, even gets to
cry when he thinks about Jericho’s dead wife
and kid. Tunney, who was so good in Niagara,
Niagara, seems both badly lost and miscast.
Going from indie pics like Niagara and Julian
Po to a Schwarzenegger film doesn’t seem
like a logical jump at all. Plus, she has one of
the most unnecessary nude scenes in recent memory
– goodbye, credibility! Byrne chews the
scenery as the Horned One, who, we learn, is able
to piss gasoline. Rod Steiger (Crazy in
Alabama) plays a puffy priest that would
rather rely on faith to save Christine, while
some of his churchie cohorts would just as soon
kill her to put an end to the whole saga.
But,
seriously, how much faith can you put into a film
that doesn’t reveal the name of its main
character until ninety minutes in? (Christine
says his name at this point, which is the first
time we hear it.) And speaking of faith, where
the Christ is the good guy in all of this? Yeah,
I’m talking about the big "G."
Can’t we rely on him to give us a hand when
Satan plans on turning our sphere into Hell on
Earth? He was a no-show. A non-factor. You can
kiss your tithe goodbye, Ms. Morrissette.
2:00 -
 for intense violence
and gore, a strong sex scene, nudity and adult
language
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