"Dead End Days"

(End of Days)

5……4…..3…..2……1……….HAPPY Y2K! COMPUTER MALFUNCTIONS! POWER LOSS! JUDGEMENT DAY!

AAHNOLD VS. SATAN!

Over this past 1999, I've kept having this nightly dream about how the world would come to an end on New Years. On the surface, these dreams would seem more like nightmares, but they were actually pretty cool. We're talkin' natural disasters, alien invasions and the Devil taking out all of the sinners, non-believers and vegetarians. Sure, it was some scary caca, but I always awoke from these dreams exhilarated. So you could imagine my excitement over the new Arnold flick which was to tell the story within my dreams. Hell, even the previews got me all excited.

But at some point I had to see the film.

I should have never woken up.

Ya see, Arnie plays an investigator in New York who lost his faith when his family was murdered years ago. Therefore, its only fitting that he is the guy who's supposed to figure out recent strange doings that appear to be of theological origin.

Can we say cliché'?

Anyway, apparently 20 years ago, the Vatican 'discovered' that all Hell was gonna break loose at the turn of the Century, aka 'End of Days', and some innocent woman, Robin Tunney (The Craft), would be at the center of it all as the bride of Satan. And that's a bad thing.

Therefore, some of the higher religious dudes felt she must die in order to avoid Armageddon, but some of the others feel that killing her would be just a bad a sin, hence sending them all to Hell. What we got here is a rock and a Hell place.

Enter referee Arnold…….w/ GUNS. A good thing.

Now, Arnie boy doesn't believe all the bible banging, but Satan, Gabriel Byrne (Stigmata….go figure), is tearing the city up in order to get what he wants (the girl), and its pissing Arnold off. And that's also a bad thing.

The problem I had with this film wasn't so much the predictability, the forced suspense ('boo' scenes), or even the lame 'Arnold rediscovers his faith by looking at a statue of Jesus' scene. It was the approach. I was expecting more of a supernatural approach instead of a physical one. Afterall, we are talking about Satan coming to Earth and doing some pretty bad and creepy things. Unfortunately, all we got was Gabriel Byrne with an attitude and a few special effects. Every time he appeared, you knew something bad would happen, and there was nothing chilling about that. We were given no surprise.

Look, this movie is supposed to depict the possible theory of Apocalyptic devastation that some feel will occur at the turn of the Century, and that's a pretty exciting and suspenseful premise with a ton of potential. But instead of treating us to spiritual and supernatural havoc and paranoia, we get a bad guy blowing things up and killing people while Muscle-Head tries to stop him. Is it just me or does that sound a lot like "Terminator 2" and "Commando"?

No theological or supernatural creativity what so ever. Everything was advertised and force fed to you. Nothing was left to your imagination, which is sad considering it WAS my imagination, along with everyone else's, that stirred my interest to even SEE this film.

Maybe if we're lucky, the real January 1st of 2000 will be the REAL thing.

C


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