What did you think of "End of Days"?   Good 42% 211   Bad 27% 134   Somewhere in between 8% 41   Haven't seen it 23% 117 Total Votes   503

Verdict: A thriller with no real spunk.

Details: Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gabriel Byrne. Directed by Peter Hyams. Rated R for intense violence and gore, a strong sex scene and profanity. 1 hour, 58 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: When the final countdown begins, at that moment when Satan himself has the upper hand and looks like he's got the Earth by its very manliness and is about to squeeze it into sheer nothingness, who you gonna pick to come to the rescue?

You're right. We hear you. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Bigger than ever, the movies' biggest he-man leaps into action, going mano a mano with a beady-eyed Gabriel Byrne as the devil in the explosion-happy thriller, "End of Days."

Too bad the movie isn't very good. Awash in often too-dark cinematography and bloated with bombs, gore and gross-outs, "Days" is a movie full of punches but no spark.

Schwarzenegger plays Jericho Cane, a depressed, suicidal ex-cop in New York pained by the loss of his wife and daughter. He finds himself the world's last hope when Satan comes to town looking to mate with one chosen woman (Robin Tunney).

"Days" is all formula filmmaking. Throughout the movie, director Peter Hyams ("2010," "The Relic," "Timecop") uses at least six overhead shots of New York for no apparent reason. One of the first big gotchas is a screeching black cat. The action sequences are so off-handedly edited they rarely pull the audience into the movie. The special effects are sometimes burdensome elements that recall other films (Satan's wandering phantom echoes "Predator"; the movie's big monster-in-a-fireball resembles both the big kahuna in "Poltergeist" and this summer's lackluster horror specter in "The Haunting").

Byrne makes for a somewhat interesting Satan and sneers some of the best lines. His intention for the world, he says, is to effect "a change of management."

Schwarzenegger tries, though. He dashes about, takes bullets in the chest and constricts in emotional pain when thinking of his dead wife and child. Plus, he roars lines like "You're a choirboy compared to me" at Byrne.

If only.

— Bob Longino, Cox News Service

[an error occurred while processing this directive]