Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to the Devil in “End of Days,” a movie thriller which asks the question: Can a seemingly ageless Austrian-American action superstar find happiness–and an audience–battling the forces of hell, as the clock ticks toward a millennium-ending midnight?
The answer may be “yes,” but only for those fans willing to follow the ex-Terminator all the way to hell and back. With its special effects-happy tale of a drunken ex-cop battling a sexually predatory Devil (Gabriel Byrne), intent on ravishing a hapless Manhattanite (Robin Tunney), “End of Days” is an overblown, overspectacular, oversold movie without an original idea in its head.
Writer Andrew Marlowe and director/cinematographer Peter Hyams cheerfully rip off everything from “The Omen” and “Rosemary’s Baby” to “Seven” and “Dirty Harry.” Meanwhile, trying to add depth of feeling to his repertoire, Schwarzenegger plays drunken, stubble-faced, tormented ex-cop Jericho Cane, whose days begin with a homeless sniper named Thomas Aquinas blazing away from the skyscrapers, and end with a mini-Armageddon.
Why is security expert Jericho so tormented? Is it because his wife and child were killed by maniacs, while Jericho worked the night shift with best pal Chicago (Kevin Pollak)? Or because he can’t quite shake his Austrian accent? While Schwarzenegger mangles villains and dialogue with equal intensity, heroine Christine (Tunney) is chased by hit teams from the Vatican, crooked police, and by Byrne’s randy and unstoppable Devil.
As it turns out, there’s good reason for all this. If Christine is impregnated by the Devil before midnight, their child will bring about the end of the world. (Or, at the very least, provide an amazing climax for “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”)
This is one movie where the silliness of the ideas is exceeded only by the size of the budget. When we first see the Devil, he’s invading Byrne’s previous body in a restaurant toilet and turning him into the reincarnation of Christopher Walken. This is a dangerous fellow. Most devastating of his weapons may be his incandescent urine, with which he can level city blocks after relieving himself against a wall and tossing matches into the puddles.
Meanwhile, as ex-cop battles Devil, we may wonder if everybody has gone nuts. Why does Jericho keep firing dozens of rounds of ammo into Byrne’s Devil when he knows he’s invulnerable to gunfire? Why does Jericho keep running back to a church where kindly Father Kovac (Rod Steiger) ties babbling Polish peasant women to the beds? And why does the Vatican fight the Devil with nothing but ineffective priestly hit squads, who insist on administering last rites before their murders?
Marlowe penned the wildly improbable “Air Force One,” which he here easily surpasses. Hyams creates such a murky film noir stew that its difficult to see or care about anything that happens. As for Schwarzenegger, he faces the mightiest acting challenge of his career during the climax– which requires him to battle the Devil in an exploding church with an undressed heroine on the altar and unconscious priests in the pews and aisles.
Could Kevin (“Dogma”) Smith dream up anything crazier? Not this millennium.
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MPAA rating: R. Star rating: (star) (star).
