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END
OF DAYS (Nov 1999)
Director: Peter Hyams.
Writers: Andrew W. Marlowe.
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney,
Kevin Pollak, CCH Pounder, Derrick O'Connor, Miriam Margolyes,
Udo Kier, Victor Varnado, Mark Margolis, Rod Steiger.
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When I woke up this mornin' coulda sworn it was Judgment Day!
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End
of Intelligence.
by
Jon Dunmore © 22 Sep 2006.
Arnold
fans will holler in joy, fans of brainless action will holler
in astonishment, and Catholics will just holler.
Illogically
written by Andrew W. Marlowe and ham-handedly directed by
Peter Hyams, END OF DAYS gets The Terminator out
of his open-backed hospital gown (Arnold Schwarzenegger's
return to the big screen after his heart operation), whilst
blowing things up in Mysterious Ways and blaspheming Biblical
verse to give Catholics something more to whine about.
It
is 1999 and doomsayers the world over live in trepidation
of their computers going fritz and losing their downloaded
porn. Even as the technological stank of Y2K muttons the
New York streets, ex-cop turned alcoholic security guard,
Jericho Cane (Schwarzenegger, with the perfunctory "dead-wife-and-kid"
backstory for Loose Cannon effect), must brave theological
waters to save 20-year-old virgin Christine (Robin Tunney)
from being conscripted as - wait for it - The Bride of Satan.
Dun dah daaaarrrh!
Stupidity
ensues.
For
every anti-hero, there is his anti-Christ. Gabriel Byrne
is the devil here - and he's out to party like it's 1999,
on a mission to impregnate Christine with the Anti-Christ
between 11 pm and 12 midnight, December 31, 1999 - ironically,
in the hour that all porn will be lost - thereby bringing
about the End of Days. Being able to read minds, conjure
hallucinations and employ limitless magick, it doesn't occur
to Satan to expedite the impregnation process by appearing
months in advance and courting Christine as a Teen Model
and then closing the panty raid easily at the appointed
time; instead, he appears on December 28th like a Keyser
Soze Terminator and wonders why she doesn't welcome him
with open thighs… (See above comment re: stupidity.)
Here
is a movie where nothing makes sense the moment it is uttered,
let alone after contemplating its veracity or mythology.
A priest (Rod Steiger) tells Jericho that '666' is really
'999' upside down with a '1' in front of it. So wait - Prince
is the Anti-Christ?
Satan
Soze pursues Jericho and Christine (J and C - get it?) around
town, at no point doing anything which would actually precipitate
their capture. In one scene, Satan recreates Jericho's wife
and child to tempt him into revealing where he hid Christine.
But if he can see so deeply into Jericho's mind in recreating
his family with enough nuance to inspire nostalgia, why
can't he see where Jericho hid Christine not ten minutes
ago?
Satan
can make an assassin talk without a tongue, yet he can't
make that assassin unjam a semi-automatic weapon. And when
Jericho shoots Satan at point blank range, Satan is courteous
enough to open his shirt to reveal the wounds closing, so
Jericho won't worry unduly about Satan's health - not sanitary
to go about with open bullet wounds… Matter of fact,
instead of simply possessing Jericho himself to get close
to Christine and rape her, Satan expends so much unnecessary
energy on side-projects (crucifying the tongue-less guy,
blowing up Jericho's partner (Kevin Pollak) and then saving
him, and then blowing him up again, ridiculously battling
Jericho when he could snuff him out with the effort of thought)
that we wonder whether a more efficient assassin/lover shouldn't
be put on the case - say, Antonio Banderas.
What
I find most precious about END OF DAYS is Arnold's
valiant attempts at The Method: "sad" means scrunching
up his eyes and not blurting out anything in a foreign accent;
"depressed" means raising a bottle to his lips
and not blurting out anything in a foreign accent; "deathly
scared" means widening his eyes and not blurting out
anything in a foreign accent. There's definitely a pattern
here, if we could only decipher it.
In
the end, the devil is dispatched not by the holy men whom
Catholics pray to for deliverance from apocalypses such
as these, but from the atheist Jericho. While the timid
men of an impotent god exhort "faith" and quiver
in their cells doing nothing about Satan actually walking
amongst them, the Prince of Darkness is thwarted by a nullifidian
with a big gun and a foreign accent. Which clearly says
something that Catholics blindly refuse to hear: that even
if the Devil were to exist, those who have been indoctrinated
to unconditionally and irrationally fear him would be unable
to conjure a belief in his downfall, let alone act towards
it. Further, they might not truly want him defeated, for
only through his contrary polarity does their god's existence
become tenable.
For
it is written in the Book of Revelations: "And the
Prince of Darkness shall descendeth upon the Earth without
any solid game plan, and impregnate a virgin on a date which
won't have any significance until the Gregorian Calendar
of the 1500s adopts the day-numbering which will put it
in synch with the equinoxes, also adopting the Anno Domine
syntax supposedly in congruence with Christ's birth, the
date of which has been forgotten, Christians appropriating
the pagan Saturnalia festival in its stead. And the Prince
shall effect a Revolution through tight purple pants and
ambiguously-lesbian band members…"
I
can believe the people being drained of blood and crucified,
and the alcoholic built like a Mr. Universe; I can believe
that a giant, supernatural monster can't kill a guy armed
only with a foreign accent; I can even believe that the
devil needs to perform some hokey thirteenth century Celtic
Druid ritual as foreplay - but what I cannot believe is
the 20-year-old virgin in New York City in 1999.
Especially around Prince...
END
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END
OF DAYS (Nov 1999)
Director: Peter Hyams.
Writers: Andrew W. Marlowe.
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney,
Kevin Pollak, CCH Pounder, Derrick O'Connor, Miriam Margolyes,
Udo Kier, Victor Varnado, Mark Margolis, Rod Steiger.
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