Rating: Summary: Without the Hype, a Good Movie. Review: The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary's Baby, Stigmata, - stories of devils and demons are as old as man, and often a common theme in Hollywood. In the "End of Days" we are treating to another story of Hell on Earth, this time the devil is here searching for his unwilling and reluctant wife. If he finds her, it will be "The End of Days."As opposed to most "Devil Movies," this one is at least one half action film. I guess, with Arnold in the credits, that was to be expected. And to give this movie its due, it looks good. The special effects and the action sequences are great. If that is what you are expecting or want, you should enjoy this film. If you thought or hoped this film was scary, it really is not. Who would be scarred with Arnold there to protect them? There are also some interesting ethical questions thrown in. Would you kill one innocent person, to save millions? Most people would say yes. The hero in this movie says no, but he doesn't believe in the devil anyway. The Pope, who knows what she is, also says no. Who is being more heroic? The Pope or the misguided hero? Well, they both have their roles to play in this film. "The End of Days" is a good film with some good performances from the supporting cast. I liked the Devil, played by Gabriel Byrne. There is also a good performance by an actress who plays a police detective also searching for the truth.
Rating: Summary: Great Action Fun with a Twist! Review: Sorry I don't have time to write a full review. However I would just like to say that this movie isn't half as bad as critics say it is. It s very interesting and intense. Check It Out. Gabrial Bryne is excellent.
Rating: Summary: Mis-cast and Silly, But Some Interesting Moments Review: Yes, this is a real gobbler of a movie, but it might have been okay if it were not just another vehicle for Arnold Schwartzenegger. Arnold, whose emotional range goes from A to B even at the best of times, displays his complete lack of any acting ability at all in a manner that begs the question why Peter Hyams bothered to make the movie at all. Someone else in the role of Jericho might have been able to make the picture work, but it would have to have been someone of the caliber of Spencer Tracy or perhaps Rod Steiger-- who plays a minor supporting role-- in order to do it. Poor Mr. Steiger looks embarrassed to be in the film, as well he might. The movie is an embarrassment to everyone in it. Except Arnold possibly, and only because when one's only acting method is a gun, everything looks like a shooting range target. Arnold shoots his guns a lot and grimaces, which is pretty standard. That said, there are some things that do work fairly well in this movie. Gabriel Byrne does just fine as the incarnate Satan. He has some fine moments in the film. He is pretty much the only one, however, who gets fine moments. There is a great scene with Jericho and the incarnate Evil One, where Evil tries to buy Jericho's cooperation. It is totally wasted with Arnold as the tormented alcoholic hero, because Arnold has no emotional range, but one can see by Gabriel Byrne's attempts to give Arnold something to play off of, that almost any other actor could have made that scene work. One can see a structure there that had potential; alas, however, completely wasted. Robin Tunney, the damsel in distress, does her best but there is no sense that she is in desperate self-conflict. This is absolutely essential to the emotional impact of the story, but it is completely absent. She screams a lot and looks moderately fetching, and that's about it. Although the pretense and the rationale for the whole story is contrived and silly, this in itself is not enough to make a movie a failure. It fails because of the actors [Arnold the hero and Robin Tunney the heroine] and is a textbook example of how important a professional performance is to a film. Without it, a movie like this is all boom and crash, growl and magazine click, grunt and obscene finger gestures-- not worth your time or your money, unless you use it to study failure and learn from it.
Rating: Summary: Typical Arnold movie. Review: Arnold Schwarzenegger films are unique in that they usually travel down two different avenues: they are either good entertainment, such as his acting in "Twins" and the "Terminator" series, or they become major flops, like the sleeper "Jingle All The Way." Very rarely do they go down both avenues, as is the case with the apocalyptic thriller "End of Days," which has its pros and cons all around. While there is an interesting premise about the test of faith against evil, this is clearly a typical Arnold movie, bogging the rest of the film down with special effects and action sequences complete with lots of gunfire and explosions. Arnold has never had to fight a character as powerful as Satan, so what makes him think that guns and bombs will send him back to hell? As the movie opens, the Vatican is given a heavenly sign that the coming of Satan is near, and the fortold prophecy of doom is realized as true. 30 years later, Satan rises up out of the sewers in (where else) New York City, where he inhabits the body of a man whom we are never introduced to or given any detail about. I had a tough time deciding as to whether or not this was positive or negative for the overall feel of the film: if we knew more about him, it might make us feel a bit of sympathy for him even though his actions are not really his own, but that of the possessor of his body and mind. It also does add a hint of mystery to his character, not knowing anything about him, because it might take away the focus of Satan's planned actions. His plans involve finding citizen Christine York, who is haunted by grizzly dreams of being taken by a mysterious man and conceiving his child. She begins receiving physical signs, too, including a strange hobo on a subway who bursts into pieces before her eyes. We also learn earlier in the movie that she has been destined since birth for this task, and is now living with the nurse who aided in her birth. Of course, she is a Satanist who took the small child into the catacombs of the hospital to have a mumbo-jumbo curse placed upon her, so when we realize she is taking care of the grown Christine, it all falls into place. In comes Jericho Cane, the tough cop who has an emotional side, too. He is assigned to protect the mysterious man who is possessed by Satan, under the guise of being a Wall Street broker. After a shootout that begins in the streets and ends up in a subway tunnel, Cane begins investigating, and soon learns that Christine is in danger, and after he saves her as well, he knows that something other than just physical danger is at work. Now it is up to him to keep the girl out of Satan's grasp, all the while fighting an emotional battle within himself against turning her in in exchange for the devil's empty promises of bringing back his murdered wife and child. The story does have a promising freshness about it: Satan's coming back and reincarnating himself by sleeping with a human soul has really never been done before. He has possessed others in other movies, for sure, but the movie is able to say that this is not enough for him to take over the world and add an extra task for him to accomplish, therefore making it interesting and giving it credibility. The battle between good and evil also touches on some good key themes here, especially when dealing with the empty promises of the devil. Jericho is promised that he will have his wife and daughter back if he gives the girl over to Satan, and even though he has never really believed in God's power since their deaths, he sticks to his faith and continues to battle his adversary. However, his fight against this particular adversary is not all about faith and religion, which is part of the reason for this movie's lackluster appeal. Come on, he's fighting Satan here. Satan is one of the most brutal and intelligent enemies to ever walk the face of the Earth, and here we are given sequences of gunfire, with Jericho shooting the man Satan inhabits to try and destroy him. Sure, the man may die, but Satan will live on, but the characters never really seem to realize this. Also, we are given lots of explosions and fire, which do tend to ruin the movie, but also do add to the association of Satan with fire and hellish settings. There is also a substantial amount of blood and gore that has to do with Satan's revenges against the holy people of Earth. One scene involves a man being mounted to the ceiling by scalpels, with letters of a different language carved into his skin. Also, there are scenes of a man's burning death, which is quite graphic. This is supposed to be a movie about faith and using that faith to fight evil, and the gore and violence take away some of the emphasis from this aspect of the story. The acting does turn out to be a postive, though, with a cast that is involving and pleasing to the eye. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Jericho Cane, and this gives him one of his most challenging roles to date. Arnold is required to show a lot of emotional and physical stress, and Schwarzenegger is able to play all of this out just as good as any other actor available. Robin Tunney keeps up the woman-in-distress angle as Christine York, and for the most part, her character waits to be saved, but she plays it so well that it does not matter. Her fright it presented nicely as well. Rounding out the ensemble, though, is the suave Gabriel Byrne, who plays the man possessed by Satan. He has so much to offer the role that if their really is a Satan, then this is what he is most likely to be like. "End of Days" fails solely on the basis of its special effects and unneeded action and gore, which tend to weigh it down from being a totally enjoyable thriller. It does have a good story, with characters that do have somewhere to go. If only those filmmakers would let them explore more of the territory around them instead of filling in the holes with useless action.
Rating: Summary: Great Arnold movie!! Review: I gave a rating of a four because I think that there was a lot of action and great background affects. He is also a great actor and knows what is he doing in a movie. This movie could someday come true....you never know when it will be your last day on earth. Everything could stop tomorrow.
Rating: Summary: The best Schwarzenegger movie since Erazer! Review: The start of the film is amazing,whitout giving away the plot, there is plenty of explosings and action, Good Points: Arnie is in top form. Plenty of violence. (i'am a viloence lover in films) The Devil is unbeliable in the film. Bad Points: It finished to soon! Now with the main review: Arnie starts in the film as a suicial idiot who loves his job and who he protects.During the film he changes from this state to hero that must protect a woman from the man he protectedand took a shot for early in the film.The devil is in side the body of Gaberiel Bryne who is so cool in the film as such he makes a pest of himself around Arnie. Also he gets hit whith weapons the army would not get to use for a long time. The film has the best ending a film of this type could have.(Don't worry i won't say what it is.) So i recomened this film for not just fans of Arnie anyone who loves a action packed thriller crossed between a "End Of Days" type of film. So i say buy it!. Also if you know how to work your DVD player you can use the extra features.If you have a subwoofer, hook it up now and listen to the best DC(Digtial Cinema) sound you will ever hear!. Star Ratting: 5 Arnie Rating: 5 Buy this DVD now! Review written by Craig Mckenna.
Rating: Summary: Here we go again... Review: The idea of satan's return to earth around new year 99/00 is very predictible. But the film actually got one high point, Gabriel Byrne's interpretention of Satan himself.
Rating: Summary: Excellent movie! Review: First I'll start off saying you will have to watch the whole thing to actually understand. It's much more than JUST evil. The first thing is that it's a very complicated movie, and if you don't like complicated movies, don't buy it. If you like Arnold maybe. The only part that digusted me was that blender scene. He mixes so much sick crap, I don't want to lose y'all's appatites. The devil goes in other people's bodies and was killed by (I'm not good with names, I know it was played by Arnold though) the one who was good, because he later got the other guy on the bad side. Then after it goes into his body and he jumps from that church then it stabs him at that one part so then it takes him away, and the daughter Emily and his wife are both there. The only other real problem is that no other people were there to fight. The police Marge was kinda fake and went to the church but really wasn't that good of a character. That's about it.
Rating: Summary: Good movie, better DVD Review: As I write this, Amazon reports that the this DVD is most popular in France, making me more hesitant than ever to come out an say how much I liked it. But it's not Jerry Lewis or Sartre--maybe somewhere in between--so I admit it, I liked it, I think's a good investment of your time. I say that because the DVD is great. Acoustically and visually terrific. The movie itself is very slick, if unoriginal: if you've seen The Omen, The Exorcist, The Devil's Advocate...you get the idea. Nothing new here, but that's sort of understandable given the 2,000 year old story line. Gabriel Byrne is simply wonderful, and Robin Tunney lends a bit of toughness to what could have been a light role. But the real charm of the DVD is Peter Hyam's director commentary. He does a nice job of walking you through the set-up of the shots, giving a viewer a real appreciation of just how much minutiae gets addressed in high-budget films, and how much a director agonizes over every small touch. His attention to detail is remarkable, his emotional investment is obvious, and you end up feeling sorry for the guy because of how this movie was received critically and commercially. So..enjoy the movie for the good acting and incredible special effects. And there are some very elegant and subtle camera shots you'll appreciate. But cue up the director's commentary and learn a lot about this film, and film-making in general. If you're a novice like me, you'll appreciate the education.
Rating: Summary: Excellent movie Review: End of Days starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gabriel Byrne is a classis good versus evil film. Gabriel Byrne plays the one and only Satan. He must impregnate a pre-ordained woman between 11pm and midnight on New Years Eve. Arnold gets pulled in to this situation on accident. Anyway Gabriel Byrne plays Satan very well. He has all the persuasive skill that Lucifer has. The way he acts is very smooth, wicked, and evil. I give major props to him for his acting skills. Arnold on the other hand is typical Arnold. He is not here for showing emotion or a different point of view. He is here to blow stuff up, and he does it very well. A note to people making fun of his name "Jericho" maybe you should look in the scripture and find out where the name Jericho is from. I will give you one fact that there are very mixed reviews on this movie. If you are looking for something with an incredible plotline do not watch it. If you are looking for good action and suspense then get this movie. I enjoyed it alot and recommend it to anyone who thinks about it.
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