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End of Days
**
Cinema
Releases - December 10, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Peter Hyams. Written by Andrew W. Marlowe. Starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney, Kevin Pollak, Rod Steiger,
Miriam Margolyes.
There is a disc jockey in "End of Days"
who gives the best possible answer to the question of whether the
world will end as the year 2000 begins: If it does, hey, everybody will be
drunk and partying and having a great time... if it doesn't, hey, everybody
will be drunk and partying and having a great time. This position is an arguable
and sound one, and can be a valid conclusion from wildly different
attitudes.
It is not so acceptable to make a movie on the
subject that is just as tonally vague, which is exactly what Peter Hyams,
the director of "End of Days", has done. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger
as Jericho Cane, a world-weary ex-cop bodyguard who finds himself having
to protect a young woman from the human incarnation of Satan (Gabriel Byrne).
The Devil must impregnate a chosen lady with the anti-Christ in the last
hour of the twentieth century, so he can bring about the end of days as we
know them, by reversing the powers of heaven and hell.
I'd call this material ridiculous. It's certainly
extreme, and there were two basic options open to Hyams on how to approach
it -- create a fire-and-brimstone supernatural horror or throw caution to
the wind and make a cheesy action flick. With Arnie in the lead, you'd expect
to know which path was taken, but instead the film wobbles between the two.
There are helicopter chases, exploding buildings, gunfights and cop clichés
in "End of Days". There is also genuinely creepy use of satanic imagery --
unobtrusively presented logos, chants and rituals; slow, quiet, ominous shots
of flames; graphic moments of carved-up corpses.
Hollywood action and hellfire are an intrinsically
unsuitable combination, and the closer Hyams mixed them the more uneasy I
got. The moments of violence, while tacky, are not tacked-on, and are integrated
into the material more logically than I expected -- but that just means the
filmmakers felt plundering Catholic theology was worth more effort than
attempting to honour the genre. James Cameron's "Terminator" films managed
to mix Cold War anxiety with shoot-outs because they were sincerely about
their subjects; "End of Days" is exploitation which finds amusement in the
most pointless religious puns and thinks Beelzebub's first priority on earth
would be to grab some tits and blow up a building.
The action feels especially inappropriate when
even Schwarzenegger looks out of place. He is an actor with powerful screen
presence when shot in close-up, making assertive movements and saying no
more than the required. "End of Days" gives his character moments of grand
facial contortion and complicated passages of emotional dialogue containing
pretty much every word the Austrian has trouble pronouncing. Gabriel Byrne
plays against him suavely, waltzing through fireballs and screaming crowds
with a sly grin and incredulously popping his eyes out whenever someone argues
for God -- but he doesn't save the movie, because most of the time he's too
busy dodging bullets.
Most of the reviews of "End of Days" have picked
on holes in the plot, but I doubt that's the right approach. I settled into
my seat at the start of this picture and waited to enjoy something preposterous
and loud. Any film where the main goal is to machine-gun the prince of darkness
into not getting laid is going to have moments that accommodate this desire.
Most of the time, though -- I swear in ze name of ze fazzer, ann ouf duh
sun, und ze holy spirit -- I was just irritated. Amen.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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