Subject: Review: 6th Day, The (2000)

From: Jerry Saravia <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 02:48:13 -0000

THE 6TH DAY (2000) 
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia 
December 5th, 2001 
RATING: 2 stars 

There are great Arnold Schwarzeneger movies ("The Terminator") and there are
good ones ("Red Heat"). Then there are outright atrocities and fair near-misses.
"The 6th Day" belongs in the near-miss category. It has a great timely concept
that fails to deliver on its very own potential. 

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode ("Tomorrow Never Dies"), "The 6th Day" stars
Schwarzeneger as Adam Gibson, a pilot who flies skiers to a distant resort. His
partner is Hank  (the dependable Michael Rappaport), and both are owners of
Double-X Charters. Since this story is set in the not-so-distant future, Adam
also has a remote that can activate a helicopter to fly without a pilot. One
day, Hank stands in for Adam and flies a rich, powerful man, Drucker (Tony
Goldwyn), to the distant ski resort until trouble ensues and everyone is killed
by some skier armed with a laser gun. Apparently, Adam was to be killed, not
Hank. It turns out that Adam's life is about to turn upside down when he
discovers that his wife and daughter are living with an exact double of Adam!
Welcome to the world of cloning, which is outlawed in the future except for
animals, and if you are caught cloning a human, you are subject to a stiff jail
sentence and destruction of the clone. But Drucker and other assorted villains
are always cloning themselves so in essence, the bad guys never actually die -
there is always a replacement. Adam now has to contend with Drucker and his
henchmen and a forlorn cloning scientist, Dr. Weir (Robert Duvall), who has his
doubts about the future of this immoral experiment. But why did they clone Adam?

"The 6th Day" begins promisingly with a wonderfully imaginative scenario, and
there are plenty of nifty ideas throughout. We are shown that in the future cars
can drive by themselves, lifelike dolls can communicate similar emotions like a
young child (though the one doll shown might make younger kids scream), you can
order groceries through computerized refrigerators, and someone like Hank can
have a virtual girlfriend who will do anything to please him. Yes, yes, we have
seen some of these ideas before, the latter being the basis for "The Lawnmower
Man," but rarely so engagingly or matter-of-factly. 

The movie's basic theme is Frankenstein revisited, bringing up the moral
questions of what happens when you bring back the dead. If someone is cloned, is
the person still human and does he/she have a soul? And how does one separate
one clone from the next, and what would it be like for a clone to co-exist with
the original model? Such good ideas are introduced but left asunder in favor of
plenty of laser gun fights and car chases galore. "The 6th Day" never bothers to
explore the questions it presents. There are glimmers of the movie's theme
occasionally, particularly in the touching scenes between Duvall's Weir and his
dying wife who had been cloned once before. But it is hard to get a handle on
Schwarzeneger's Adam who seems to be doing heavy breathing throughout and little
else. The screenplay never allows much focus on Adam's family, who are left
skirting the edges of the movie's blowout action scenes. Arnie still has the
steely presence he always had but lacks the vigor and humor he usually brings to
his roles. His last sentimental scene is a travesty and emotionally off-kilter
when you consider one of the unsurprising twists in the movie's latter half.  

The villains themselves are so threadbare that I could have cared less about
them or their plight. They die, they are cloned, they die and they are cloned
again. Big deal. Goldwyn's Drucker never seems like a real threat - the actor
was a more convincing villain in "Ghost." Poor Michael Rooker played an
exasperated assassin who also does a lot of heavy breathing but never seems
involved.  

"The 6th Day" is overlong and padded with excessive action scenes but it never
actually takes flight. Don't get me wrong - there is some imagination at work
here. It's just that with all the right tools and all the right notes, it never
reaches fruition. 

For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at
http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/JATMindex.shtml 

E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at
[email-masked] or at [email-masked]

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