End of Days: Collector’s Edition

-Universal (1999)

Summary

He’s fought drug lords, robots, barbarians, Sinbad, Predators, and now he must face his toughest challenge of all: Acting. 

My Thoughts

I haven’t made it a secret that the Digital Monkey Box staff are huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fans. We love him no matter how many allegations of groping are levied against him. In fact, we grope as much as we can in his honor. That’s why I find it strange that out of all the DVDs I’ve reviewed for the site so far, End of Days has had to be the hardest. It’s taken me well over a year to write this review. Why? Because this film is so hard to get into that I’ve aborted watching it about three times. I’ve finally come to terms it and I’ve decided to get it all over. This is my DVD Band-Aid. I’m ripping it right off.

End of Days is an important film for Arnold fans, because it marked his short lived return to films after some major heart surgery and before his role as Governor of California. With End of Days, he really wanted to do something different for his comeback and different it is. It begins with typical scary choir music, images of fire, and some priests doing secret priestly stuff. It turns out that every thousand years a child is born that has the ability to basically unlock the ending of the world as we know it. The film then shifts to 20 years later to THE MILLENNIUM! Freaky huh? The end of the MILLENNIUM? You remember when all the demons ate everyone’s face off? Me neither, because I passed out drunk after not getting laid once again. So at least for me, the millennium is a pretty damn dated setting as I'm guessing it is for everyone else now.

The first glimpse we get of the Devil is an invisible thing that comes out of the sewers. Unfortunately, it’s not the Predator. The invisible thing then inhabits the body of some random handsome fellow played by Gabriel Byrne. Said handsome fellow then goes and cops a feel of some random hot woman. After he leaves the restaurant it blows up so we know that he’s evil and not the good guy.

Now we get to meet Arnold for the first time. He’s loads different than any other films we’ve seen him in. He nearly blows his brains out because he’s so depressed, much like in Mel Gibson in one of the Lethal Weapon films. I don't remember which one, but I don't think it really matters. (Editor Shawn's note: I think it happens in every Lethal Weapon movie, so Paul's right, it doesn't matter.) Later, Arnold makes a gross protein shake consisting of garbage. It’s about this point that I have the most problem with the film, because as a film viewer it’s really hard to swallow Schwarzenegger as a man so at the end of his rope he’s willing to kill himself, especially when he’s got a sidekick in Kevin Pollack's character who's ripped right out of True Lies.

What made me want to keep watching was the direction. If this wasn’t an action film that tries incredibly hard not to be a Schwarzenegger film, it would have been a lot better. Still, there's a dark intensity that builds before being completely lost in an ensuing scene where Schwarzenegger is hanging from a helicopter, chasing a guy down. End of Days doesn’t get good again, or at least it didn’t draw me back into a sort of semi-believable film world, until the real chase between the now grown woman who's the key to all Hell breaking loose and Satan incarnate. You see, the incredibly handsome man needs to have sex with the "chosen one" if you will. The film becomes an enjoyable chase film with a few twists and turns I didn't see coming along with all the ones I could.  

One of the most notable scenes involves Arnold practically getting crucified. His opponent seriously underestimated him, completely ignorant to the fact that Arnold has already been crucified in Conan. You know what happened in that film? He ate a vulture, before being resurrected by a priest like he is in this film. When will bad guys learn? Arnold Schwarzenegger is completely immune to crucifixion.  

As I've mentioned earlier, End of Days' major failing is its inability to successfully ride the precarious line between action film and dark thriller without falling off the edge. It works sometimes and other times it doesn’t, especially when Schwarzenegger is forced to do anything other than shoot guns or act tough. It is kind of refreshing to see a horror film, albeit a quasi-horror film, where the hero has sense enough to procure a gun even if it only serves as some psychological comfort. There are also three film cliché’s that I absolutely can’t forgive:  

Cliché #1: Arnold finds out where the old man lives by using a matchbook cover from a bar. This clue was brought to you by every detective story written since the 1940s. 

Cliché #2: When Arnold’s generic side kick opens up the dead priest’s refrigerator he finds… a shrieking cat! How in the fuck did the cat get in there? And more importantly, how did it close the door behind itself?

Cliché #3: Not one, but two, “There’s still good in you!” scenes.  

With all the problems I have with it, I’d say that End of Days isn’t all that terrible either. Once I got past all my initial feelings about the film, I began to find myself falling into the world. I suppose this can be chalked up to my expectations being too high, then adjusting accordingly. Still, the moments where Arnold has to emote are pretty pitiful, not to mention painful. I’d reserve this one if you either really like Arnold or Satan.  

As for the edition, considering that the who film is almost entirely dark, the picture quality was really good. The 5.1 Dolby Digital mix was a little disappointing. Although it did a decent job, I expected a little something a little more for an action/horror film.  

Extras

End of Days: Collector’s Edition just screams average. It’s got some mediocre, yet moody motion menus (Holy crap, that’s a lot of alliteration) and only a fair amount of extras.  

The featurette “Spotlight on Location” is a lot better than I thought it would be. Instead of just being a promo piece, it is filled with some great interviews with the cast and crew.  

The commentary track features director Peter Hyams, but no Arnold! ARRGH! A Schwarzenegger vehicle needs to have him on the commentary track. Oh well, Hyams does an okay job despite some rather large gaps where he remains silent. Otherwise, it’s a rather functional commentary with enough info for those who are really bored and have nothing better to do.  

“The Special Effects: The Devils Playground” contains a few behind the scenes featurettes that are rather insightful. One of them in particular is worth your time, because it contains the mom daughter sex scene without a lot of the gross special effects. You know, I’m glad that I can provide this kind of service to you.  

“The Book of Revelations” is a purely text interpretation of the actual Book of Revelations found in the New Testament. Even though it really condenses what’s in the bible, it still doesn’t make any freaking sense.  

The “Soundtrack Presentation” is nothing more than a thinly veiled commercial for the soundtrack that it’s so thinly veiled its invisible. 

The theatrical trailer is well done, considering its one of the few I’ve seen in awhile that’s in widescreen and has a 5.1 surround sound mix.

“Production Notes” is a trip back to crappy old school DVD extras with a bunch of, well notes on the production of the film. Take another crappy old school DVD trip back in time with “Cast and Filmmakers”, which consists of short bios and the dreaded filmographies of lore.

“Universal Showcase Recommendations” is a bunch of commercials for Universal films. Yippee!

The DVD Rom features are about as worthless as other DVD Rom features I’ve seen before consisting of a photo gallery, a film synopsis if you can’t watch it for yourself, and a behind the scenes feature that you can read. Yeah, lame.

Score:

Film: 7.0

Extras:  6.5

Edition: 7.0

- Paul