End of Days (1999) |
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End of Days (1999) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Action |
Menu Animation & Audio Dolby Digital Trailer-Aurora Scene Selection Anim & Audio Audio Commentary-Peter Hyams (Director) Featurette-Spotlight On Location Featurette-Revelations (End Of Days Visual Effects) Theatrical Trailer Music Video-So Long-Everlast Music Video-Superbeast-Rob Zombie Easter Egg-TT for The Hurricane Biographies-Cast & Crew |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1999 | ||
| Running Time | 117:01 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (83:32) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Peter Hyams |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Roadshow Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Arnold Schwarzenegger Gabriel Byrne Kevin Pollak Robin Tunney Rod Steiger |
| Case | C-Button-Version 1 | ||
| RPI | $34.95 | Music | John Debney |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0  (320Kb/s)English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (320Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | English for the Hearing Impaired | Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
End Of Days is set in the latter part of 1999. Jericho Cane (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a man who is past caring if he lives or dies. In fact, I'm sure he would prefer the latter. Why Jericho is like this is revealed during the course of the movie so I won't spoil it for you. Jericho and Chicago (Kevin Pollack) are assigned to protect a New York stockbroker (Gabriel Byrne), who may just turn out to be Satan himself.
It's not long before the action starts and it doesn't stop till the credits start to roll, so sit back, hang on and enjoy the ride.
The picture is extremely sharp throughout the entire movie, except for one scene at 52:59 - 53:05, where the background seems to be lacking in some detail. No low-level noise was noted. At first, I thought we were in for another superbly bright transfer with excellent shadow detail, as can be seen in the interior shot of the Vatican, but this was not to be. Apart from a couple of scenes, the entire movie is filled will large expanses of black with absolutely no shadow detail whatsoever. After listening to the director's commentary, I realized that this was a deliberate choice by Peter Hyams, as he repeatedly mentions how he loves to make the picture dark. Personally, I found the lack of shadow detail annoying.
The colour is excellent. It is beautifully saturated and natural looking. There were a couple of occasions where the skin tones seemed just a little too reddish, but these occurrences were during the darker scenes, so they are probably accurate to the original film's intent.
This transfer is almost pixelization and grain free, and is truly wonderful in this respect. The grain never gets to a point where it even starts to distract you from the picture. Warners should take a leaf or two out of Roadshow Home Entertainment's book on this point, as their titles almost always suffer from excessive grain. Eyes Wide Shut was yet another example of this problem. Warners please take note - this is how a DVD should look grain-wise.
No MPEG artefacts were noted. Aliasing and moiré artefacts were also non-existent, with only two trivial occurrences noted at 46:25 and at 66:05. I spotted three film artefacts, of which only one was of any concern. It was a reasonably size artefact in the form of a white ring, at 29:35.
This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change placed between Chapters 19 and 20 during a fade-to-black, at 83:32. The layer change is perfectly placed - I did not notice it at all. There is no sound pause either, making this layer change totally seamless.
After the movie finishes, the Spotlight On Location extra starts playing instead of the disc returning back to the main menu.
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| Overall | |
The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie, and that includes Arnold's dialogue! One of Arnold's lines, at 59:03, sounded ever-so-slightly distorted, but on re-listening to this phrase I realized that it was just Arnold's gravely voice.
No audio sync problems were noted.
John Debney’s musical score suits the movie well, especially the haunting choral theme music.
The surround channels are very aggressively used for ambience, music and lots of special effects. This puts you right in the midst of the action. The sound placement within the sound field is also excellent, and with all the directional effects, this is one hell of a great soundtrack. The two stand-out sequences for me were at 1:50 and 104:20. Having said that, there is one thing that I thought was not quite 200% - and this is getting really picky - the big explosion scenes did not seem quite dynamic enough, and consequently I found them a little disappointing.
The subwoofer gets a solid work-out, but there are only a few scenes where it is really active. When I say 'really active', I mean window-rattling active. The .1 LFE channel is seamlessly integrated into the overall sound stage. Two great subwoofer sequences can be found at 1:42 and 39:45.
| Dialogue | |
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| Overall | |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Reference quality sums up the sound mix and surround channel usage of this disc - it doesn't come much better than this.
There is an excellent selection of extras on this disc.
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| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Sony DVP-725, using Component output |
| Display | Sony Projector VPH-G70 (No Line Doubler), Technics Da-Lite matt screen with gain of 1.0 (229cm). This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to DVD player. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Onkyo TX-SV919THX |
| Speakers | Fronts: Energy RVS-1 (3), Rears: Energy RVSS-1 (2), Subwoofer: Energy EPS-150 (1) |