Dir.: Peter Hyams
Plot: Don't be daft...
Well, here comes Christmas, and with it one of my absolute favourite holiday turkeys. Near-millenium fever can surely be the only reason this thing ever got made, cashing in as it does on the apocalyptic overtones suggested by approach of the year 2000.
God, this is such a bad film. However, this was my second viewing, so I knew this fact already and yet still taped the damn thing and watched it with my younger brother from start to finish. What I'm getting at, then, is that whilst by all artistic levels (also scientific, religious and general intelligence levels) this is a pisspoor movie, I still enjoy it tremendously. Arnie actually puts in a fairly thoughtful performance at times - okay, his delivery is always going to be stiff, but he manages to produce some tears - as some kind of bereaved cop (I admit I never have paid a huge amount of attention) trying to stop the Devil from impregnating a mortal woman at the moment of the new Millenium, thus establishing his reign over Earth (stick with me here). There are even tears at one particular high-point. Good gravy.
All of which sets us up for an absurdly brainless thriller featuring a rather fruity depiction of the Roman Catholic Church as a nest of cults and sacrifices where every bugger has stigmata. I mean, okay, Arnie needs a new challenge, but in choosing Lucifer as his next adversary the makers had apparently forgotten that Arnie is just a bloke with a technically good physique... versus the Prince of Darkness and all his attendant powers. Old Nick, by the way, is naturally immune to bullets - which doesn't stop our bizarrely persistent hero from shooting him many, many times over the course of the movie. There were points when we thought the film was never going to end solely due to Arnie's apparent learning difficulty in this matter, but it does - and just as preposterously as you'd imagine it would.
That said, the film has a secret weapon, and one which lifts it up out of the metaphorical gutter right to the level of the metaphorical kerb. Gabriel Byrne as the Devil. Brilliant. Much like Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, it's a blazing hunk of reckless ham which holds the whole piece of shit together. Whether no-one told him how richly absurd his performance was or he knew and just didn't give a shit, his Lucifer radiates the sheer presence that literally everyone and everything else in the film lacks. Doling out the cool lines with a snappiness last seen in Miller's Crossing, he spends the film striding around shagging birds and disposing with people in awesome ways (my personal favourite would be getting some random skater boy hit by a bus - the reaction shot is priceless). It doesn't really hurt that he's rather sexy, either.
Robin Tunney, bless 'er, doesn't seem to know quite which note to strike as Satan's sexual prey. Trapped between Arnie, who approaches his role with complete earnestness, and Byrne, whose forked tongue is quite clearly in cheek, she goes for neither and doesn't leave much of an impression (although I blinked a tad at the appearance of Miriam Margoyles as her mother... Professor Sprout, we hardly knew ye). Oh, yes - Kevin Pollak is about, too, as Arnie's partner. I wish we got to see more of him, he knows how to deliver a dry remark. He departs the movie about halfway through, only to return later as part of the setup for a finale which is actually pretty awesome right up until the end. Being chased through a subway train by Lucifer? Excellent, yes please. Lucifer just sort of giving up because fuck it, how else were we gonna end this crap? Well.... no. That sort of sucks. But what else could we reasonably expect?
sans Byrne 2/10
avec Byrne 7/10
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