Y2K, on steroids

>> Schwarzenegger takes on millennial angst with End of Days

by MATTHEW HAYS

What to do about the ailing state of the American action movie and Arnold Schwarzenegger's career? After The Matrix, aren't young audiences simply going to demand something different?

With End of Days, Schwarzenegger and director Peter Hyams have thrown millennial angst into the mix. The countdown to 2000 is near (just like in real life!) and Satan has arrived on earth to locate the spawn whose seed he planted some 20 years earlier. Thank goodness, his spawn is none other than the mighty photogenic Robin Tunney, conveniently appealing to the biggest filmgoing demographic. Yep, Satan's spawn is a babe, and he wants to stick it to her before a certain point. If he does, the end of the world as we know it will ensue and all hell will break loose (literally). Schwarzenegger, as a cynical, faithless, alcoholic cop, is pitted against the Antichrist.

As might be expected, there are some good fight and chase sequences here, plenty of explosions (no doubt hell is a very noisy place where it's terrifically difficult to get a good night's sleep) and some trademark Arnold one-liners (sample: when he's told that the earth may well end at the stroke of midnight on New Year's, Arnold asks if that's Eastern Standard Time). And Gabriel Byrne, as Satan personified, adds some class to the affair.

But despite all the Satanic trappings and all that money the producers spent on dynamite, there's little bang to be had with End of Days. It's a lacklustre vehicle, with the title appearing to pertain more to Schwarzenegger's career than to the screenplay's plot.

The biggest mystery surrounding End of Days is the lack of controversy about it. Where are those diehard Catholic activists who found Kevin Smith's Dogma so profoundly disturbing? End of Days is what I would term a Catholic exploitation movie--an ultraviolent film in which endless numbers of people are murdered, god is maligned and the Republican Schwarzenegger is presented as a Christ-like figure. To the truly faithful, wouldn't a blatant effort to cash in--which End of Days undoubtedly is--be more offensive than a film like Dogma, which honestly explores a lapse in faith? :

End of Days opens Friday, November 26.