End of Days
The main reason I was ever curious to watch Peter Hyams’s “End of Days” back in 1999 was because it had the first new song from Guns N’ Roses, one of my favorite bands, in six years attached to it. I never saw the movie, and heard the song, “Oh My God,” years later. (It’s not a good song.) It’s funny to think that in 1991, both GN’R and Arnold Schwarzenegger were at their peak when “You Could Be Mine” was used in “Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” only for both to be middling by the time they reunited again on “End of Days.” What a difference a decade made for two titans.
There’s a lot of interesting things to like about “End of Days,” or at least to be hopeful for. The script has a compelling end-of-millennium doomsday hook to it. The supporting cast is stacked with talent, from Kevin Pollack and Gabriel Byrne to Rod Steiger and Udo Kier to Robin Tunny to many others, around Arnold. And as a cinematographer and director, Peter Hyams is a solid choice when it comes to genre. Sadly, a lot of this film’s problems start with the script, by Andrew W. Marlowe, and the casting of Schwarzenegger in the lead role. What probably should have been a pulpy suspense thriller becomes a big-budget action movie, and that doesn’t serve the story the way it should.
So, what is the story here? If you can put it all together before Steiger’s priest finally lays it out at the 1 hour, 6 minute mark, I’ll be impressed. Actually, that’s not fair; you can figure out that, in 1979, a young girl was born and sanctified for a ritual by shadowy types for a ritual 20 years later where she will have sex with Satan, possessing the body of an investment banker, to bring about a child on New Year’s Eve, 1999. The problem is that exposition is basically left for that scene in the middle of the film, and the movie jumps from one scene to another setting everything up before we really get a clear picture of what the heck is going on. I don’t know that we ever figure out why Byrne’s investment banker was selected by Satan other than, “Hey, people hate bankers.” But Byrne’s bank was saved early on from assassination by NYPD detective Jericho, Arnold’s character, so that’s basically how we get to where the story kicks off.
This movie doesn’t work as an Arnold vehicle action film. I like that Arnie wanted to do something a bit different, but the action scenes in this film are completely forced into the narrative, especially the early sequence involving a helicopter and roof. This should have been a “Da Vinci Code”-like mystery or something like “Fallen,” with Denzel Washington, or Scott Derrickson’s recent “Deliver Us From Evil.” Heck, if you wanted to go the full horror route (which looking at Sam Raimi and Guillermo Del Toro before Hyams implies), this could have been an interesting spin on “Rosemary’s Baby.” Unfortunately, what we are left with is nonsense, and part of that is because Marlowe, better known for his sharp script for “Air Force One,” and as the creator of the police procedural “Castle,” doesn’t really have a strong hold on what he wants to do here when it comes to the religious themes and ideas. This script feels like it just wants to tap into Y2K paranoia, but the rest of it should be on-point if you’re going to do that. (See “Strange Days” from 1995.) I like some of what Hyams does here visually, but he just cannot make the whole thing work.
