Film 2 - Jonathan Romney on a formula to forget
Last year, Hollywood forecasts predicted that the century's end would be marked if not by fiery portents in the sky then at least by a glut of millennial apocalypse movies. Like most prophecies of apocalypse, that one, too, has fallen flat: only a handful of such films have been made, and most of them are safely on their way to being forgotten come the 21st century - you do remember Deep Impact, don't you? We have only two more of them to go but, curiously, the religious aspects of apocalypse have been saved for last.
Once all the sci-fi fireworks are over, it's left to the stragglers to dust down the Book of Revelations and intone chapter and verse at us. In the States, this has happened literally in the shape of The Omega Code, a thriller that did respectably at the US box office and was produced by the evangelical Trinity Broadcasting Network. Michael York is a media mogul bent on world domination. I haven't seen the film, but I think it's safe to assume the good guys win.
The devil may have the best tunes, but his scripts are as ropy as anyone else's judging by End of Days. This infernal epic - no expense spared on digital fire and brimstone - sees the return from limbo of Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a suicidally depressed New York security man going mano a mano with Lucifer himself. Old Nick has come to town in the shape of Gabriel Byrne, snarling away like one of Brooklyn's suaver mafiosi. He's on the trail of his allotted bride, a gamine played by Robin Tunney: one roll for her in the satanic sack, and it's curtains for humanity.
The only interesting thing about Peter Hyams's inept extravaganza is the way it shoehorns together genres that simply don't fit - the satanic horror film and the heavy firepower action thriller. End of Days tries to have it all: high-speed subway chases and sombre priests (headed by Rod Steiger) mulling over ancient texts on their PCs. There's a ludicrous sequence where Arnie straps on the usual arsenal to defeat his foe. But Satan is Satan, after all, not just another Bond villain, and it rather diminishes the awe to see the Dark Prince fending off hails of bullets, or using his combustible pee to blow up trucks.
The film gets really crazy when it pitches the weary Schwarzenegger as a redeemer and martyr (St Arnie of the Bleeding Pecs). He not only gets crucified, he's beaten up by Miriam Margoyles and has his infernal temptation in visions of a family Christmas (Perry Como carols round the tree). He finally has his Passion facing down the fiend at midnight Mass. It's all balderdash, but not without curiosity value: after all, it's the nearest Schwarzenegger will ever come to one of those spiritual torment routines that Harvey Keitel used to do so heartily in Abel Ferrara films.
The year's final apocalypse is Kevin Smith's comedy Dogma, which Film 4 is releasing on Boxing Day. The latest from the wunderkind who made Clerks and Chasing Amy, Dogma's combination of scatology and eschatology was vigorously condemned in the US by the Catholic League, but it offers a tame, heavy-handed kind of outrage. The plot - two fallen angels plan to return to heaven - is an excuse for Smith to dramatise a number of whimsical theological fancies designed to put the wind up the well-starched cassock: God's chosen servant being a lapsed Catholic who works in an abortion clinic (Linda Fiorentino); a black 13th apostle (Chris Rock); two prophets in the form of foul-mouthed slacker cretins; and Alanis Morissette as the deity (silent, hallelujah).
The film's defenders have gone out of their way to stress that Smith is himself a devout Catholic, and somehow that's not surprising. Scabrously anti-religion but mawkishly pro-God, Dogma feels like a revue mounted by boisterous seminary students who want to prove that it's OK to read Marvel Comics and Thomas Aquinas. The best joke comes early: a cardinal introduces the new sect of Catholicism, Wow, which "retires" the crucifix and introduces a new, punter-friendly "buddy Christ". But Dogma feels at once puerile and pompous, beginning with the disclaimer: "Even God has a sense of humour." If so, I don't think he'll find much in Dogma to amuse him; End of Days, on the other hand, will have him rolling in the aisles.
"End of Days" (18) opens 10 December nationwide.
"Dogma" (15) opens 26 December at selected London cinemas
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