End Of Days

Opens November 24, 1999

About a year ago, a friend of mine attended traffic school with director Peter Hyams. Each of the students were asked to give their name and occupation. When Hyams' turn came, he gave his name easily enough, then stated that, for a living, he made film. To which the instructor quipped, What, you work for Kodak? This story doesn't have a whole lot to do with Hyams' new movie End of Days, but I think it's apropos because it exposes a problem that a lot of directors have. They can't admit they just make movies, not art.

After seeing End of Days, I can say with absolute certainty that Peter Hyams doesn't make film. This Schwarzenegger vehicle ain't art by a long shot. What it is, however, is a sometimes wild, sometimes implausible ride that is saddled with a too-predictable Armageddon plot and saved by a solid dose of humor.

Now, I confess I like Arnold movies, especially when things blow up and he says his trademark lines like I'll be back. While most critics were probably salivating at the prospect of ripping this film to shreds, I was secretly hoping it would be solid. I'm only half disappointed. So, here are the rules, if you plan to see this film and enjoy it even a little bit. (A) This is a Schwarzenegger movie. (B) This is an Armageddon movie. (C) This is a totally predictable Schwarzenegger Armageddon movie. If you accept these rules, you might be (almost) pleasantly surprised.

End of Days draws on every Satanic movie you've ever seen. There's glimpses of the recent The Devil's Advocate, and of classics like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Derivative? Hell, yes. In fact, you could probably figure out the plot without me laying it out for you, but here it is. Arnold plays Jericho Cane (I'll take Biblical names for $500, Bob), a security specialist in the midst of a crisis of faith (read: character back story), still mourning the murders of his wife and daughter. When we first see him, he has a gun to his head a la Riggs in Lethal Weapon and he's stopped from killing himself by the entrance of his partner Chicago (Kevin Pollak). Pollak and Arnold work wonderfully well together, giving the movie a sort of Laurel and Hardy quality that makes us realize it's not all meant to be taken seriously. Thank God we're allowed to laugh. It makes the really silly religious stuff much easier to stomach.

Things heat up when Jericho discovers a link between his Wall Street client, ambiguously known as The Man (Gabriel Byrne), and a young woman named Christine York (Robin Tunney). Poor Christine has been plagued from childhood by nightmarish visions. Of course, you would be too if you'd been baptized by snake blood at birth, a horrific scenario we see in the 1979 opening of the film. As for The Man, let's just call him Satan, since we all know that's who he is. And Prophecy has allowed Satan to choose Christine as the mother of his child, a child who will loose Hell on earth and bring on, you guessed it, the End of Days.

With this set up, you can fill in the blanks. Lots of stuff blows up and Arnold's arsenal of guns gets more and more elaborate as the days tick away to the New Millennium. Never mind the fact that the New Millennium is really the end of the year 2000, not 1999. (Guess Satan didn't study his Bible.) Never mind the fact that no one stops to think about the logic of a gun killing Satan. I mean, this guy's urine is pure evil (see the flick, it'll make sense), you think an Uzi is going to stop him? Then, of course, there's the whole larger problem of Arnold trying to play sensitive. He does his darnedest, but