End of Days

If watching Arnold Schwarzenegger get the living snot kicked out of him over and over again in an Ernest Goes To Camp/Jail/Medical School/etc. sort of way is your idea of a dandy treat, then you might like Universal Pictures' recent millennium cash-in, End of Days. He gets beaten and crucified by bands of armed satanic thugs, smashed against everything possible by a possessed Gabriel Byrne (who looks so much like Paul Reiser that it makes you want to yell out "Paul get out of this terrible movie!"), and emotionally bruised beyond the point of tears by an extremely touching ballerina music box.

While some people might be interested by the Apocalyptic smoke and mirrors, other people who enjoy cinematic perks like, um, plot and acting will likely stand up in the theater and beg to be killed off very quickly. It's the perfect family picture for those wishing to torture their family. Arnold plays Jericho, a former-cop-now-suicidal-drunk-turned-crack-security-agent, seeking to save a 20 year old Christine York from a bad date with Satan, biblically scheduled to go down at 12:00 Eastern Standard Time. If the two (York and Satan) do get it on, the world ends; "The Gate of Hell are opened," shouts Rod Steiger (the only person who chooses to act), a kindly priest. Jericho also has to save "the girl" from a S.W.A.T. team from the Vatican who want to kill her against the Pope's orders. In this film, Satan is very sexy and he also pees gasoline. Also, the color red means "bad." Most of the time you can say Arnold's lines just before he does. He calls out "Cover me," and "Just doing my job," and to a helicopter pilot, "Take us up there." There's a scene where an evil psychiatrist says to his family, "It's not the end of the world," and just then, the doorbell rings and, guess what, it's Satan! I laughed out loud, half expecting it to be Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley.

End of Days is not a terrible movie by accident. It was very carefully crafted into garbage by the writers and the actors and the Art Directors, and especially the Director, Peter Hyams, who didn't let any terrible movie making get done half-heartedly. No one is used well in this movie. At the very end, Arnold, too, is possessed by Satan and he does this manic Steve Martinesque All Of Me jolting "there is someone inside of me" walk. No mistake there. That was movie trash, and it meticulously crafted as such. Even more amazingly, the movie fails to add to any discussion about real Y2K fear, and fails to even comment on our national tendency towards group panic. End Of Days? I wish.