November 28, 1999 -- The "End of Days" is a big budget action movie with a silly premise which is O.K. as an action film, but is a bit weak as a drama.

This film is billed as the return of Arnold Schwartzenegger, star of such action film hits as the "Terminator" movies and "Predator." Arnold does his best and he almost pulls it off in a final, climactic scene, but let's face it, when you are hanging your film on Arnold's dramatic acting skills you are taking an awful big chance.

Arnold plays Jericho Cane, a depressed, alcoholic security guard who is about at the end of his rope. He has lost his faith in God and is about ready to kill himself from grief over the loss of his family. He's not exactly the one you would pick to be God's champion. His opponent is Satan himself, taken form as a New York stockbroker (played by Gabriel Byrne). Satan is allowed to escape from Hell, the story goes, once every thousand years to try and sire a child. If he succeeds, the world will end. The object of his desire is Christine York, (played by Robin Tunney).

According to the movie, the stockbroker who loses his body to Satan, and York, are both destined for their roles through astrology or something like that. Neither one has any choice in the matter. Not only that, but the devil must take his bride between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. on New Year's eve, Dec. 31. When Cane hears that he laughs and says "Eastern Standard Time?" The answer to that is that the Gregorian monks who set up the calendar didn't start at the birth of Christ, as is commonly thought. No, they started at midnight 2000 and counted backwards. That explains why they were two to 10 years off on the birth of Christ (yep, the real millenium was 2 to 10 years ago, and the world did not end). But it does not explain how they knew there were such things as time zones and how they knew about the existence of the North American Continent.

The problem with this millenium nonsense is that Dec. 31, 1999 is not the end of the millenium, Dec. 31, 2000 is. That's because there was no year zero to start the calendar. The Romans didn't use zero. There was 1 A.D. and 1 B.C., but no zero. Since the years start with one, neither decades, centuries nor millenia can end with a year that has a nine in it. Look at it this way. Say the fingers on your hand represent the years in a decade. Start counting fingers with your thumb (or little finger) being zero. Even though you have 10 fingers, you will end up with your last finger counted as year nine. You are now ready to start a new decade after the year nine. But if you start counting at one, instead of zero you will discover that nine is not the last year in your little 10-digit decade, the 10th finger is. That's the same way our calendar is. New decades start at the end of the 10 year, not the beginning, the same with centuries and millenia. However, our math-challenged media is trying to convince us otherwise. Maybe they need to be taught how to count their fingers.

O.K. so now we know the makers of this movie don't know how to count their years, or their fingers, and they don't know much about calendars, or about the fact that the earth slows down slightly in its rotation because of the influence of tidal forces from the moon. I wonder if those Gregorian monks had all the right leap years figured into their calendar.

Enough ranting. Back to the movie. As I said, Arnold is here to save the world and Byrne is the devil. Arnold's idea, of course is to start with small guns and work his way up to bigger and bigger guns. He gives the devil a pretty good workout, but it really shouldn't be even close when it comes to a mere human versus the Destroyer of Worlds. The story needed some explanation as to why Satan and his minions don't kill Arnold when they have the chance. There are also some very questionable big, beefy Catholic priests who go around trying to kill York. They look more like Mafia hit men than priests. They don't look like any priests I've ever seen.

I like the final scenes, but I don't want to give away what happens. Arnold does his best to pull the movie out of the fire, but he's just not a good enough actor to do it. Byrne is a a good actor, but he's just not quite right for this part. Christopher Walken would have been a better choice. Al Pacino did better in the same part in "Devil's Advocate."

Arnold is fine as an action hero, but here, he has to carry too much of the dramatic load. The film needs either a better actor, like, say Tom Sizemore, in the lead role or another actor to help him out. He has way too many lines to say in that thick Austrian accent of his. There's an awful lot of blood, torture and horrible deaths, as you would expect from such a film (rated R). Tunney does a good job as the bride of Satan and Kevin Pollak is O.K. as the sidekick named Chicago. This film rates a C.

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