Reviewed - The Omen: MAJOR motion pictures have, in the past, been commissioned to coincide with annual feast days and historical anniversaries, but this remake of The Omen, Richard Donner's 1976 shocker relating the unhappy circumstances surrounding the demonic possession of a diplomat's young son, must be the first film to owe its existence to an eccentricity of the calendar. The film will be released next Tuesday, June 6th, 2006. Yes, that's right. 06/06/06 - the number of the beast!
Saddled with an immovable release date, John Moore, the Louth-born director of Behind Enemy Lines, has had little time to develop or hone the project. Let us be charitable and blame the fiasco that has resulted on that unforgiving production schedule.
Virtually everybody in the film is miscast. Julia Stiles is too callow for the mother and Liev Schreiber too coolly cerebral for the father. Young Tomas Wooler's warm, open face would look comfortable smiling up at Tim Allen in a Disney film, but seems weirdly out of place attached to a body inhabited by some relative of Satan. Worst of all, the Czech Republic delivers stunningly unconvincing performances as England, Italy and the Holy Land. A final desperate car chase, allegedly through central London, takes the protagonist past shops clearly decorated with huge signs in the Czech language. Perhaps they are driving through the suburb of Little Prague.
All that noted, some of the older actors do appear to be having a whale of a time. Mia Farrow, a deranged nanny, gets to run about waving a sledgehammer, while Michael Gambon, never averse to gnawing a table leg, delivers a brief performance whose delicious cheesiness justifies the ticket price alone.
The Omen is quite as bad as that other ecclesiastical conspiracy thriller currently clogging up cinemas. But, unlike The Da Vinci Code, it is, at least, frequently funny, albeit by accident.
