The 6th Day

You have to be a little leery of any movie whose ad photo features the star with his face half covered, as the one for “The 6th Day” does. It looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger is undergoing a fancy ophthalmologic examination, and makes you wonder if he is embarrassed to be associated with the picture. A curious mix of science fiction thriller and fourth grade level ethics instruction, the movie actually starts out with a few good ideas but ultimately buries them under the sheer tonnage of mediocre special effects and rather routine stunts. The picture boasts some nifty plotting underneath the window dressing, but it mostly goes to waste as director Spottiswoode and writers Cormac and Marianne Wibberly pile on the casually brutal violence and the lame James Bond-like bon mots. They are obviously after the all-important teenage male ticket buyers, and that’s too bad, because the picture, while not terrible, could have been much better. The movie opens with a biblical quotation onscreen, in case you missed the allusion of the title, or the significance of the name Adam for its main character.

Adam (Schwarzenegger) is a decent working man in the not-too-distant future (“sooner than you think,” as the movie has it) with a nice wife (Crewson) and daughter, a thriving business as a helicopter pilot, and a pal (the ubiquitous Rapoport). His seemingly normal life is set against a backdrop of controversy surrounding human cloning. It seems that cloning humans has been outlawed, due to some oft mentioned but unexplained mishap that took place years earlier. However, cloning pets and organs is OK, and the current big Kahuna of that industry is Drucker (Tony Goldwyn), aided by the brilliant Dr. Weir (Duvall). Adam’s life takes a strange turn when he comes home for his birthday party, only to find that he is already there. Yup, you guessed it: human cloning is real! It is happening right now! All of which leads to the worst form of identity crisis for Adam, and a lot of running around. He is trying to dodge the killers sent after him, including Talia (Winter), a babe dressed up in the “Matrix”-dominatrix style so favored by dangerous women of the future. If this sounds a bit familiar, don’t worry, you haven’t been cloned. You are simply remembering 1990’s “Total Recall,” another science fiction thriller starring Schwarzenegger as a man with a serious identity crisis.

Like the earlier picture, “The 6th Day” pays almost slavish attention to the physical details of life in the future. The design and look of the picture are commendable, even if a few of the special effects are a little phony looking. There are quite a few clever notions in the movie, including “Re-Pet,” a company owned by Drucker that specializes in making exact duplicates of dead pets for grieving owners. The popular doll of the future, called a “sim-pal,” is one of the creepiest movie concoctions in memory (it makes the ventriloquist’s dummy in 1945’s “Dead of Night” seem like Winnie the Pooh). The action roils along as Adam attempts to get to the bottom of this cloning business. (He has always felt a little uneasy about the whole concept, even objecting to employing the services of Re-Pet when the beloved family dog dies.) This is where the going gets a bit tough, however. While the weapons and helicopters and cloning technology may all be very futuristic, the car chases and fights and gun battles are all very today. (Do we still have to have car chases in the future? Apparently so.) It is unfortunate that the filmmakers did not spend more time trying to update these action staples.

In fact, it would have been nice if they had skipped them altogether, because there is so much more promising territory to mine in the story. Although the plot gets a little muddled at times, it offers just enough twists to keep you engaged, and it actually does throw a few interesting questions up there. How do we know we are who we think we are? How will this change if cloning becomes a reality? If a person is a fifth generation copy of the original, is it really a person? Is it the same person? “The 6th Day” doesn’t really take a position on these matters; in fact, the answers seem to depend upon whether the clone in question is a clone of a good guy or a bad guy. Questions of identity and self, however, are of limited value to the action genre, and they are subsumed here by the thriller imperative. (Now, this is the movie that M. Night Shyamalan should have directed, instead of the moribund Unbreakable.

He could have brought his sensibilities and style to bear on these themes, with better results for all.) (By the way, if you want to see a funny movie about cloning, rent 1996’s underrated “Multiplicity,” starring a terrific Michael Keaton as three copies of himself.) Workaday action director Spottiswoode manages the scenery just fine, but fares less well with the characters. Of course, he is not blessed with the most expressive of stars. Arnold tries hard, and he is still muscular, but he has really not improved as an actor since his “I’ll be back” days. Never the most graceful of performers, he shows his years here, lumbering through the action scenes with more determination than inspiration. (It is never made completely clear, by the way, how Adam came to be so skilled in combat. The one-line reference to the “Rainbow Wars” doesn’t really cut it.) “The 6th Day” disappoints because they let an interesting concept escape. The film could have been shaped to have much greater impact, because there is something inherently fascinating about the idea of starting over with a brand-new body and a clean slate. In the world depicted in “The 6th Day,” the technology has outpaced the thinking about what to do with it. Come to think of it, the same can be said for the movie itself. (11/22/00)