Customer Reviews

End of Days [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(85)
4 star:		(78)
3 star:		(52)
2 star:		(47)
1 star:		(53)

 

 

I cannot understand the bad reviews for this film! Sure, this isn't one of the best movies ever made, nor is it one of Schwarzenegger's best films, but I still liked it-it was better than okay.

Be warned however; this film is INTENSE and not for children, with references to and images of Satanism, representatives of a fringe group of Catholics trying to pin a girl down in order to stab and kill her, the devil having sex with 2 women, and some awfully gruesome murders.

A previous reviewer gave away the ending for this film (Thanks alot for ruining it for me, whoever you are) so I won't give it away again. I rented it with the worst expectations possible, and was surprised to discover that I liked it. Not something that I would want to buy or see more than once but I enjoyed it! Better than "Eraser", "Last Action Hero" "Batman And Robin" (but what wasn't better than that stinker?) and some of Schwarzenegger's earlier films, but not as good as "T2" or "True Lies". I don't know what else to write, without giving too much away.

An excellent movie! The best blend of action/horror I've seen to date. Sure, some people will try to nick pick certain details, and complain endlessly about this and that, but overall this was the most entertaining movie of 1999. Sure we all realize now that the panic over the Y2K bug and any prophetic fears were silly, but you need to look past all those things to really appreciate this film. Basically, it's a horrifying thriller, packed with great action sequences. Yes, I realize many negative reviews are regarding "Arnold" vs "The Devil", and yes, that does sound silly, but how about Arnold vs the mafia/military (Commando), Arnold vs a technologically advanced alien (Predator), or Arnold vs the "System" (Total Recall) & (The Running Man) etc. The way to sum it up is to basically say, "All great Arnold movies ARE far fetched" That is WHY they are MOVIES. They are NOT supposed to be realistic, but an escape from reality. Enough with the negative reviews for being far-fetched. That is why the largest percentage of us WATCH movies. To escape! Once again, this is an EXCELLENT film. Do not take it too seriously, but then again, do not take any Arnold action flick seriously, or get your head examined.

End Of Days DVD

End Of Days starring Arnold Swarzennegger playing a cop turned security guard seeking to prevent a diabolical plot for Satan to mate with a human. Great special effects.


Recommended for Arnold Swarzennegger fans and fans of action movies.

Gunner December, 2007

Behind the films Schwarzenegger has done with direcor James Cameron(Terminator, Terminator 2, True Lies) this is Arnold's best action film. My only complaint about the movie is a pointless sex scene, but other than that this film has action, special effects, even laughs. Schwarzenegger turns in arguably his best performance in this movie, instead of killing a hundred people and walking away unscaved his character is scarred and sad. He also has lots of dialouge which makes his performance even better. I don't understand why this wasn't a big hit, it should have been.

Let me start by saying I am a huge fan of Arnie and own most of his movies. Okay, Arnold is not the greatest actor to ever grace the screen, but he usually makes great, suspend-disbelief-and-they-are-entertaining movies. Gabriel Byrne is a great actor and usually appears in good movies. Kevin Pollack plays a side-kick as well as anyone and is good comic relief. Between the three of them, you would have hoped that one of them would have read this script and said, "Oh My God, this story is REALLY BAD!"

The plot of this movie is predictable and so full of logical holes that it makes one wonder if anyone actually wrote it or if they just started filming a bunch of "cool" action and occult scenes and thought putting it all together would make a good movie. The Devil is alternately brilliant and stupid. Arnold somehow manages to outsmart the Prince of Darkness and the New York Police Department, despite being an alcoholic burn-out. And, after watching this movie I am still confused as to who Arnold and Kevin actually work for. As for the number of the beast being 999 instead of 666 and that being why Satan has to mate in 1999, I am still confused as to what happened in the year 999. Wouldn't that have been the end of the thousand years they kept babling about in this movie? Did the Devil run into an ancient version of Arnold and get his butt kicked then, too? And if so, why didn't he learn?

In addition to the cast already mentioned, this movie also has other good actors who should have known better. Robin Tunney (great in "The Craft"), Rod Stieger ("On the Waterfront"), Anthony Fultz ("For Love of the Game") and CCH Pounder ("Face Off") are all wasted in this suprisingly bad movie.

Don't get me wrong. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, and I know movies are supposed to be entertainment and not reality. But, at some level, the movie must make sense and fill in the blanks. This movie seems to be just a vehicle for Arnold to kick Satan's ass. That is not a good enough reason to see this film.

If you are a true Arnie fan, you will see this anyway, despite the flaws (I did). But, it is not up to his usual quality, and is best rented first, before bought. Caveat emptor.

"End of Days" is a good movie. The storyline is great, and Arnold is his usual self. Yes there are some unbelievable things in it, but what do you expect from an Arnold movie? These movies aren't made to analyze and prod over every single mistake, they are made to sit back and marvel at the spectacular special effects. I decided to give this four stars after seeing it for the third time.....the movie really grew on me.

Possibly my favorite part of this whole DVD is the two rarely seen music videos by Everlast and Rob Zombie. Just another reason to buy DVD insted of VHS. Also the sound quality is great, you can hear every little piece of cement fall when Arnold is in the Church. Overall a great DVD!

End of Days is one of those action thrillers that one day will wind up on a wonderful list known as Bad Movies We All Love. But it takes a few years to achieve such cult status, and, so, I am left to deal with today. I don't intentionally have it in for this type of picture, but the genre today has a lot in common with pop music, because they both have such specific target markets. In the case of action thrillers, it is fourteen to twenty-five year old males. There's nothing at all wrong with having a particular audience in mind. The problem is that, by limiting the appeal, you tend to crystallize the subject matter. You fall into a pattern of rehashing the same material, because, as one group outgrows your genre, there's a fresh one to take it's place.

I suppose that End of Days would have been more interesting ten years ago. That was when CGI and other digital effects were new and fresh to the eye. Today, it's just another costly FX driven movie. Compare it to another Arnold Schwarzenegger picture, the much better Total Recall [1991], and you'll see what I mean. ...

Then there are the special effects. They are spectacular, but predictable. Some are a bit weird. In several scenes, such as a restaurant's blowing up, the street traffic just keeps moving. Even New Yorkers are not quite that jaded. In another, The Man falls twenty stories and lands on a SUV. Its alarm goes off, the vehicle is totaled, but no crowd gathers. The movie is especially prone to defying the laws of physics. There is a chase scene aboard a runaway subway train. Jericho manages to uncouple the car he and the girl are in. The rest of the train jumps the tracks and wrecks. Moments later, their car plows into the wreck. Do they jump out of the car? No, they just run to the rear and grab hold of a support pole. Not only are they not hurt, they remain standing. Give us a break!

Screenwritter Andrew W. Marlowe (Air Force One) obviously didn't put much effort into making a likeable storyline with his script for End of Days. The story is often slow, plot often forgotten, and situations often unpleasant. At least Frank Lauria (Dark City) managed to do the best he could with this assignment.

The story involves a cop discovering he is destined to be the protector of a woman Satan wishes to impregnate on the night of the millenial New Years celebration. Satan runs amok, raping, possening, and -- yes, this is true -- urinating in his evil ways.

The kicker is, the cop, whose family was brutally slaughtered by a drug lord, is a suicidal alcoholic, and the only way he can defeat the devil is by pushing away his past and renew his faith in the lord.

The novel is filled with fast paced action scenes, brutal killings, possesed cultists, and vatican assassins. Just enough to amuse anyone.

I'll pass up on the movie but I'll recommend the novel.

This is how an exclusive studio should do it. The picture quality is great throughout, with great depth, excellent shadow detail and solid blacks; the colors are also spot on. Where this title really excels is in the audio department. The TrueHD lossless track is absolute reference quality. This title is worth the purchase for the aural experience alone. The extras are decent, most likely a port of everything that was on the normal dvd release, and the movie is a very fun "bad" movie.

All in all a great disk that is well worth the money.

He has battled nuclear terrorists on Earth and power mad conspirators on Mars. He has taken on alien predators in the darkest reaches of the jungle and morphing cyberkillers that seemingly nothing can stop. So, after all those fights, what's left for Arnold Schwarzenegger? How about Satan? Now that all of the universe's lesser evils have been dispatched with lots of powerful explosions and a few grunts of dialogue, it's time for Arnold to move on to Mephistopheles, who, as luck would have it, is taking a few days off in New York City (so he can get laid).

End of Days is the latest Armageddon story to steal a few of its themes from the Biblical Book of Revelation. It also represents one of the flurry of millennium-ending movies popping up in theaters all across the world. The previews make End of Days seem a little on the dumb side. In that, they are misleading - the movie isn't a little dumb, in fact it's a lot dumb. This is easily the dopiest apocalypse script to make it to the screen in a long time, but this time, Schwarzenegger is attempting to play a character with a little more background and depth than the comic book action heroes he usually portrays. And, although the former bodybuilder has more personality than Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Christopher Lambert rolled together, he's still not an impressive thespian, and he clearly lacks the range necessary to make his End of Days character into a believable, tragic figure. He gives it the old college try, though, and at least manages to look the part - unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt.

Jericho Cane (now there's a Biblical name) is a former NYPD cop turned Striker Security guard. He left the police force after his wife and daughter were brutally murdered, and now he endures things one day at a time, taking life-threatening risks with the vague hope that some accident will allow him to join his family. Then, on December 28, 1999, an event happens to alter Jericho's destiny: Satan arrives on Earth and takes over a body that looks surprisingly like Gabriel Byrne. He's here for one reason - to impregnate a woman. For some reason that is never made clear, this has to happen between 11 pm and midnight on New Year's Eve. If it does, the world will be plunged into endless darkness. The girl, named Christine York (Robin Tunney), has been marked from birth as the Devil's bride, and now only Jericho's intervention can save her from a fate that is literally worse than death.

From a theologial standpoint, End of Days is laughable. Most movies don't get the little things right when it comes to religion, but this film stumbles when it comes to the bigger issues. Quite a few of the things Satan does (like walking into a church) go against commonly held doctrine, and the script has to go through a lot of contortions to explain why December 31, 1999 is so important. In order to do this, the Number of the Beast is changed from "666" to "999" (the explanation: when Saint John, who wrote Revelation, had this vision, he dreamed the number upside down and backwards), and, for some reason, a "1" is added in front to make "1999" (this must be the latest version of "new math"). Not following this? IT DOESN'T MATTER! Trying to make sense of End of Days is a futile endeavor. The intent is to watch all the well-executed explosions, see Schwarzenegger participate in several Bond-like action sequences, gaze at a few choice shots of gratuitous nudity, and stare at director/cinematographer Peter Hyams' stylish photography.

The bottom line is that Schwarzenegger fans will probably be pleased, action lovers won't be bored, and the Catholic League will be angry. Everyone else will see End of Days for what it is: a (deliciously) bad motion picture.