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After a two-year hiatus that included recovery from heart surgery, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned to the big screen in November 1999 with
End of Days, a Thanksgiving turkey if ever there was one. Overcooked and bloated with stuffing, this ludicrous thriller attached itself to the end-of-the-millennium furor that kicked in a year too early. A prologue begins in 1979 with panic in the Vatican when a comet signals the birth of a child who will, 20 years later, become the chosen bride of Satan, destined to conceive the devil's spawn between 11 p.m. and midnight on December 31, 1999. It's hard to decide who has the more thankless role--Robin Tunney as Satan's would-be bride, or Schwarzenegger as Jericho Cane, the burned-out alcoholic bodyguard assigned to protect the girl from Satan, billed as "The Man" and played with cheesy menace (and an inconsistent variety of metaphysical manifestations) by Gabriel Byrne.
With kitschy character names like Jericho and Chicago (Arnie's partner, played by Kevin Pollack) and lapses in logic that any 5-year-old could spot, End of Days is a loud, aggravating movie that would be entertaining if it were intended as comedy. But Schwarzenegger and director Peter Hyams approach the story as an earnest tale of redemption and tested faith, delivering a ridiculous climax full of special effects and devoid of dramatic impact. You're left instead to savor the verbal and physical sparring between Satan and Jericho, resulting in the most thorough pummeling Schwarzenegger's ever endured onscreen. Of course he eventually gets his payback, just in time for New Year's Eve. Perhaps he was touched by an angel. --Jeff Shannon
The trailers looked like trouble, and they didn't lie. Arnold Schwarzenegger's millennial "Omen" flick-the Devil comes to New York to mate with a virgin on New Year's Eve-looks and plays like leftover high-testosterone eighties filmmaking. There's nothing here that breaks any new action ground, and the performance by Gabriel Byrne as the Prince of Darkness (his dialogue and strange accent make him sound like he's doing a Henny Youngman shtick) is embarrassing. When Schwarzenegger throws down his guns (always a bad sign) and figures out that faith, not bullets, destroys evil, there's little to do but wait for some enlightenment. It never comes. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
