|
|
 |
End of Days
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Universal Pictures Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (18th September 2008). |
|
The Film
 “End of Days” was the final nail in the coffin for Arnold Schwarzenegger's career that had a fairly decent run through the 80’s and 90’s but leading up to “End of Days” the action star had released a string of largely terrible action films and family films as well. With the likes of “Last Action Hero” (1993), “Junior” (1994), “Eraser” (1996) and “Jingle All the Way” (1996) all failing to pull in serious numbers and the critical and fan-based backlash of “Batman & Robin” (1997) highlighted Arnold’s incredibly bad performance as Mr. Freeze, as well as director Joel Schumacher’s colorful and incredibly silly vision. “End of Days” would mark the action stars return to “R-rated” fare that established his career in the 80’s and early 90’s, but the film would not live up to expectations. Arnold didn’t get back into big box office until “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” in 2003 and even that wasn’t phenomenal. “End of Days” is another in a line of biblically themed films, but this time with some action and a Terminator thrown in for good measure. Jericho Cane (Arnold Schwarzenegger), an alcoholic security guard has hit rock bottom. Once upon a time he was a New York police officer and when his wife and daughter were murdered it sent him plummeting into the depths of self-destruction. Meanwhile its 1999 and this year is significant (turn 666 upside down and you get 999, add a one in front and hey it’s 1999! The year of the Devil). And what do you know, the Devil (Gabriel Byrne) has returned to Earth and he’s mighty horny and needs to spread his demon seed, apparently this is something that happens every now and then or every thousand years or something. To be honest I’m not entirely sure, this stuff isn’t exactly explained so it’s really up to the viewer to fill in some things… moving on, the girl whose chosen to carry the Devil’s spawn is Christine (Robin Tunney) and as it turns out Jericho has to save her and also the world from plunging into eternal darkness… which is pretty much were he was heading anyway with his drinking, so even if he looses it should be a win-win. There’s a lot not to like about “End of Days”, it’s a production that seems sloppily put together when the film’s original director left the project, the role of Jericho was originally intended for Tom Cruise but somehow somewhere along the line someone thought this would make a great vehicle for Arnold. And in some ways he manages to hold it together even adding some character flaws to the hero (as mentioned before, he’s an alcoholic) but even still he manages to retain his meat-headed action persona. Which in many ways is Arnold doing what has worked for him his entire career. So there’s really nothing new here in that sense. So basically it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Arnold’s acting is lacking in almost every sense, I half expected him to mispronounce words, it was about the only thing keeping on the edge of my seat, and that’s sad. Luckily Arnold isn’t the only one suffering from a seemingly directionless performance. Byrne’s performance isn’t entirely memorable other than the fact he plays the exact opposite of the character he played in “Stigmata” the year earlier, but as far as actor’s that have played the Devil he doesn’t exactly make the list of impressive performances which include Robert De Niro in “Angel Heart” (1987), Al Pacino in “The Devil's Advocate” (1997), Peter Stormare in “Constantine” (2005) and even Gary Oldman in “Beat the Devil” (2002) (BMW short film) were all better and far more memorable. Having seen this film twice now (seen it theatrically when it originally came out and this second time around for review) the only thing that was memorable about Byrne was his flammable urine… I’ll even go as far to say that scene was a metaphor for Byrne pissing away his career. “End of Days” also suffers from occasional plot holes and leaps of logic many of which are tied to the film’s religious themes. There will be plenty of opportunities for viewers to roll their eyes, wonder what just happened and even have to stop the film and rewind. It’s a frustrating endeavor when there’s plenty here that simply doesn’t make sense or seem just plain stupid. Now, while the film has many, many flaws, the film’s style and tone is appropriately dark, from the production design to the photography all work well to delve the viewer into this world. Furthermore the action is actually quite good but doesn’t entirely wow the viewer, there are some explosions and guns, and a bit of nudity so it’ll keep us boys entertained. But that’s really all there is, at the end of the day “End of Days” is a convoluted action-thriller that only delivers on the action and fails in almost every other respect.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 and is delivered to us on Blu-ray disc in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and has been created using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The film;s tone is very dark and thus so is the photography, at times it does appear too dark and thus hard to make out certain things especially detail. There is some noise, in the blacks and also in the whites as well which can be a bit annoying at times. Despite this the image is very clean, I don't think I saw a single bit of dirt or speck throughout the print, detail holds up except when the image is too dark, but cityscapes and close-ups retain a lot of detail. Skin tones remain natural although sometimes they veer on the brown-orange hues and that tends to wash out some detail and texture. Overall its a serviceable transfer as far as HD goes.
Audio
Three audio tracks are included here, in English DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 surround presented at 48kHz/24-bit as well as DTS 5.1 tracks in both French and Spanish. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its DTS-HD track. This surround mix is loud and impressive. The dialogue is clear and distortion free, ambient noise is subtle and makes great use of the rear channels and puts you in each environment. I was impressed with the overall depth of the film's sound mix and the action scenes literally explode off the screen. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish.
Extras
The only extra that Universal have included on this release is an audio commentary. Below is a closer look at this supplement. There's a feature-length audio commentary by cinematographer/director Peter Hyams. Hyams remains mostly screen-specific throughout the track and delivers information in a slow and droll fashion that will put anyone to sleep. He comments on the locations, the props, the actors, the photography, music, etc, just about everything that he sees on screen he'll comment on. There's some interesting information here but you'll really have to struggle through his dry commentary to be rewarded by anything interesting and that's asking a lot of people, even for fans of the film. My advice, skip this track... For those that are interested you can bookmark your favorite scenes on this disc using the "My Scenes" feature as well.
Overall
|
|||||
|