END OF DAYS
I'll take a Stigmata with double cheese

  I couldn't help myself - I burst out laughing at a scene in this movie where a priest (Rod Steiger, who once damn near made a Chevy Chase-sized fool of himself on Politically Incorrect) tries to explain that the number of the Beast isn't really 666, it's 999 - y'know, as in 1999, and next thing you know...here comes Satan!  Uh-oh, better get Maaco.

It's kind of nice to see Catholi-horror make a bit of a comeback at the end of the millennium, but I don't imagine it's going to last much past New Year's, even taking into consideration that "2000-isn't-REALLY-2000" thing, which is mercifully never brought up in this movie.  And it's CERTAINLY not going to get very far if the best Hollywood can give us is this and Stigmata.

Arnold Schwarzennegger stars as Jericho Cane (dig the name, Jericho - if I had a name like that, I wouldn't let anybody call me Jerry), an alcoholic ex-cop who's working at a private security company.  Harrison Ford turned this role down because he wanted the movie to be more serious, "like The Omen" (oh, my).  Does Arnold look like a man who drinks heavily?  Well, never you mind that.  Anyway, Jericho and his partner Chicago (I wouldn't let anybody call me Chick) (played in typically amusing sidekick fashion by Kevin Pollack) uncover some nasty supernatural goings-on in New York.  It turns out that the investment banker (Gabriel Byrne) that they've been hired to protect is really Satan (HAH, see, sometimes, it isn't just your imagination).  And all Satan has to do is have sex with an unlucky young Chosen One lass (Robin Tunney, who you might remember as one of exactly four reasons to watch The Craft), and poof, it's like end of the world time.

Where Stigmata presented itself with an all-too-serious face and the screenwriter clearly thought he knew a lot more about the subject matter when he really did, End Of Days carries no such pretension.  Anyone with any doubt as to how serious this movie is meant to be taken would do well to remember the scene were Tunney shows her birthmark and is met with priests saying "She has been chosen!" while they cross themselves.  Or the scene with Arnold Schwarzennegger hanging on a big cross.  Or the protracted-for-the-extra-stupid bit involving one character who obviously died but comes back anyway.  Or the tender finale which Arnold has to deliver in a ludicrously undignified position.

Or...well, the plot.  Really, Satan just has to have sex with this chick?  That's it, and all of a sudden, end of the world?  That's a pretty absurd thing for the fate of humanity to hinge upon.  Their marriage, maybe, the birth of their child, certainly.  But just the sex itself, I don't think so.  And you'd think that this chick, raised by Satanists, would be raised to LIKE the idea of getting laid by Ol' Scratch, but no, she seems pretty ambivalent about it.  For that matter, she seems downright indifferent - she just kind of lies/sits there whenever the situation comes up.  Nobody even suggests what might have happened that we escaped armageddon in 999 if Satan's supposed to be doing this every thousand years.

Yessir - it's everything you'd ask a synthesis of Arnold-Action and Catholi-horror to be.  Overblown, whacked, a total mess, and absurdly entertaining no matter how bad it gets.  Stigmata failed drearily, but End Of Days fails gloriously.  Director Peter Hyams, in a weird way, should be proud.

Acting's what you'd expect all around.  This is probably Arnold's most challenging role, and he Arnolds it all the way through - could you really ever believe Arnold contemplating suicide, or crying?  Thought not, but it's sickly enthralling to watch him try.  If you read my review of Stigmata, you know just what I think of Byrne - and who better than the most obnoxious scenery-chewer of our or any time to play Satan?  And he's in the same movie as Rod Steiger!  I wish they'd had scenes together, we could've seen which one out-chewed the other.  Byrne's scene where he tries to tempt Arnold into the Dark Side ain't half bad, though it kind of looks half-assed next to Al Pacino's climactic rant in The Devil's Advocate.  And Tunney is cute, helpless, and yes, for a fraction of a second, we get to see her naked.

One contention a lot of people have for some reason is just why this investment banker is chosen to be Satan's host body on Earth.  I dunno, it makes perfect sense to me - he's loaded, but he doesn't have the public visibility of, say, Bill Gates (who everybody already thinks is Satan and wants dead anyway).  Who else would you pick?  Anyway, Satan gets one of the more wacked-out scenes I've seen all year where he goes to the home of his head priest (Udo Kier) and has a threesome with the guy's wife and daughter, which has to be seen to be believed.  It's not quite clear as to whether those two are in Satan's flock, willing to do anything he says, or if he just beguiled them with his devilish charm.  No, what I take issue with is that nobody says "Satan" the right way - nobody's intimidated by the name unless you say it like "SAAAAAAATAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!

Hyams makes most of the action sequences work, particularly a bizarre-looking rooftop chase involving Arnold being suspended from a helicopter that chases his target, making Arnold look like he's some superhero flying in the air.  Like in that ad he did in Japan that I saw.  But without the cartoon effects.  And the effects, as per usual with this sort of thing, makes it mostly worthwhile for fans of CGI-candy, particularly a bit involving a dude with weird hair on the subway.  Yeah, hundred-million-dollar FX movies are a dime a dozen, you might say, but when the FX make me think "Coool!" then I'm generally pleased.

And there's also some nudity, sex, and gore, which is fine by me, because dammit, if I want cheese, I want sleazy cheese!  And it's got the False Scare By Cat, which happily gets a half-decent punch line care of Pollack.  There's also a new Guns N' Roses song in here somewhere (damn if I could find it), if you consider Axl Rose to be Guns N' Roses.  (hey, I wanted an Axl solo album before I wanted one from the rest of them, but you'd think he'd just credit it to himself as such instead of a band that, let's face it, no longer exists)

I wouldn't really recommend End Of Days except for fans of enjoyably, half-knowingly awful movies.  And somebody please slap that stupid fuck who heard that "greatest trick the Devil ever pulled..." line and said "They stole that from The Usual Suspects"!

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