The 6th Day (2000) – Review

In one of the more interesting rabbit holes of moviedom is something I like to call The 6th Day conundrum. Picture this: The 90s have drawn to a close and Arnold Schwarzenegger is noticing that his place at the top of the Hollywood mountain isn’t anywhere near as solid as it once was so in an attempt to replicate his glory days, his next film, The 6th Day, is a sci-fi action movie that attempts to meld bombastic action with a cautionary tale that warns against the manipulation of human DNA and the amoral use of cloning. But why is this a rabbit hole? Well, just think about it: Arnie made a movie that totally recalled a previous hit while being about fucked up cloning that ended up being a fucked up clone of Total Recall. I mean, I know life can be cyclical, but surely this is ridiculous.
Anyway, under the directorial eye of Roger Spottiswood (Tomorrow Never Dies) and surrounded by a cast of quality character actors, Arnie attempted to crack a new millennium by becoming the clone ranger, but could he also duplicate his past successes?

It’s the near future and mankind has been blessed/plagued by all manner of scientific advancements that range from helicopters that can turn into jets to holographic girlfriends; however the most significant leap forward is cloning, which goes as far as replacing dead pets and recreating organs for transplant, but stops short at whipping up replacement humans as it has been ruled illegal. In this world, charter pilot Adam Gibson struggles with the moral dilemma of whether or not to clone his recently deceased dog in order to spare his daughter the anguish, but while this everyman (who just happens to be built like an Austrian bodybuilder) wrestles with this issue, he suddenly finds himself thrown into the middle of a clone conspiracy when he comes home one day to discover his wife and daughter are chilling at home – with himself.
While Adam tries to deal with the dact that he’s apparently been cloned and replaced, out of nowhere he’s apprehended by a gang of goons who apparently work for Replacement Technologies, the company responsible for all the cloning that’s obviously started to violate ethics laws left and right. Forced to go on the run, Adam now has to try an figure out a way to get to billionaire CEO Michael Drucker to confront him about what has happened while simultaneously plotting to get his doppelganger out of his house before he smokes all of his cigars and beds his wife.
However, that’s going to be tougher than it seems as every time Adam takes out one of those pursuing thugs, they simply just get re-cloned and sent back out on his tail again. With his family, his life and his very identity on the line, Adam has to try and fight to get his existence back, but what if he wasn’t alone? What if he could recruit someone who knows him like he knows himself?

By this point, after a career of exceptional, game changing action films that pretty much molded an entire generation of audiences, Schwarzenegger’s star was seemingly in decline after films like Eraser and End Of Days failed to land like Terminator 2 and True Lies. But with The 6th Day, there seemed to be a conscious attempt to invoke the future imperfect of one of his most infamous films – Total Recall. However, while Total Recall saw Dutch director and part time lunatic, Paul Verhoven deliver a sci-fi thriller that brutalised reality much in the same way Schwarzenegger brutalised his enemies, The 6th Day presents a rather similar future while
delivering barely a third of the wit and invention. Thus we get a future that batters us with funky inventions that only act to provide either something cool or something silly and adds virtually nothing to the plot other than the central concept of cloning. However, I will say this for Roger Spottiswood’s rather uneven world building, it’s weirdly fucking accurate. From smart refrigerators that inform you that you’re out of milk, to self driving cars, to genuinely hideous life size dolls that harken at the eventual arrival of M3GAN, this is one futuristic B movie that actually gets just as much stuff right at it does wrong (nacho flavoured bananas?). However, this level of accuracy maybe fun, but it doesn’t stop the The 6th Day from being constantly confused by what it wants to say about the morality of cloning a human being. At first, the movie’s opinion seems to synch up with our lead as the notion of clones, especially ones that are being bogarted by a plainly corrupt billionaire, are a bad thing and that these potentially soulless creations must never be created – but after a twist sees our hero cloned, he exhibits all the positive attributes of his host which weirdly contradicts everything thr film has been saying. So wait, is the movie saying clones are a good thing or not? I don’t know but then neither does the movie, which is a shame considering all the interesting issues the film could raise.

There’s other issues too. The tone is all over the place, meaning that some of the goofier action beats nullify any real sense of tension and for some reason, the filmmakers have signed off on some truly horrendous editing and some ghastly scene transitions that are so painfully early 2000s I couldn’t help but wince every time it happened. Plus, there’s some really bad visual effects, a miscast Robert Duvall who acts his role like he’s in a far better movie and Michael Rapaport in full, sleazy, 00s comedy buddy mode that ultimately leave The 6th Day feeling like a wet weekend.
However, despite a whole lot of flaws, there’s still enough of that old Arnie magic to carry us through. The big guy is obviously having fun playing off exceedingly ugly dolls, a fun cast and even himself when the plot machinations predictably have him teaming up with his clone and there’s even the odd spot of exemplary, old school one liners flying around that sees Schwarzenegger deliver this little belter –
Arnie: “If you really believe that then you should clone yourself while you’re still alive.”
Baddie: “Why is that? So I can understand your unique perspective?”
Arnie: “No. So you can go fuck yourself!”
OK, so it’s hardly the Indianapolis speech from Jaws, bur it worked on me.
Better yet, the flick has rather an interesting line in henchmen as Michael Rooker, Terry Crews, Sarah Wynter and Rodney Rowland as a quartet of henchpeople who keep getting re-cloned back into action every time Adam manages to fuck one of them up and their whole little mini-drama about them getting progressively more put out by their deaths proves to be one of the best aspects of a deeply uneven movie.

While the people responsible are obviously hoping to clone an eccentric sci-fi thriller in the vein of Total Recall, The 6th Day pisses in its own gene pool thanks to uneven direction, ratty effects and some headache inducing editing. But die hard fans of the Austrian Oak will no doubt manage to wring some good out of a movie that tries (and mostly fails) to be bad to the clone.
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