The 6th Day is a 2000 science fiction movie about a man who meets a clone of himself and stumbles into a grand conspiracy about clones taking over the world.
After seeing himself through a window in the living room of his own home – the other him celebrating his birthday with his family and friends – Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger) discovers he’s been illegally cloned, and those that did it now want him dead. Isn’t that always the way? On the run he goes, chased and attacked at every corner as he tries to figure out why anyone would want him replaced and how he can punch them for doing so. He heads to the police to report the crime but finds he’s already been there … and things only get weirder from there.
Director Roger Spottiswoode‘s clever but often imbalanced thriller The 6th Day is built on a fun premise, set in a near future where science has mastered cloning of pets and organs (the ones in your body, not the ones with keys) but the laws of the land prohibit the technique to be used on humans because, you know, ethics schmethics. But for sure, those with power ignore such rules, and as their clones go unnoticed, it creates a very cool idea for a conspiracy film, sort of à la Invasion of the Body Snatchers mixed with Total Recall if both those movie weren’t really that good.
Schwarzenegger is clearly having some fun – perhaps a bit too much – playing it a little fast and freer than he probably should have, the movie certainly primed for something heavier than what he get (he was panned by most critics for his performance, and admittedly, there’s a lot of cringeworthy delivery on tap. Oh, Arnold, what were you thinking?). However, the plot is just the right combination of ludicrous and compelling that it’s a lot more entertaining than it has any right to be. It’s cheese with a touch of plastic dinnerware class, like a good comic book made into a late night cable movie by people who never read it. Who’s not gonna watch that?
There’s plenty of silly moments, including a wholly unbelievable escape scene that sort of tries to homage Harrison Ford‘s (or at least the expensive dummy stand in) swan dive off a dam in The Fugitive, but even that is kind of charming. Even as you’re shaking your head while watching, you feel like you have to give the filmmakers some credit for sheer chutzpah. Either way, what I really like though is a brief bit when Adam eludes his deadly pursuers and makes his way to the local police station, where he tries to convince the desk sergeant that there’s two of him. And the one that’s not him is eating his birthday cake.
The place is crowded, of course, and it’s lit and set just as you’d expect a ‘futuristic’ police station would look like with lots of holograms and flashy tech. Adam is explaining to the beleaguered cop that he’s got a problem, though the officer tells him that an hour earlier, he’d already filed a report about his stolen car (one the real Adam took) and it’s not at all like what he’s saying now. When Adam mentions that he stole the car, a holographic lawyer suddenly appears between them, a professional looking woman in a nicely fitted skirt suit saying she’s the court-appointed counselor. She instructs Adam to keep quiet, but when the cop says Adam claims he’s been cloned, she disappears and a holographic psychiatrist takes her place, right away wondering why Adam is avoiding talking about his parents. That’s funny stuff.
As the cop sees his desktop monitor signal that Adam is in the system as a psychiatrist patient, things shift back again and soon Adam is on the run once more. Standard Schwarzenegger fluff. He even says he’ll be back. Whew. Either way, it’s this all too brief bit of dark comedy in the police station that offers a little taste of what the film might had been if written with less attention to B-grade action and more on the contextual possibilities of life in this version of a gadget-heavy society. The ‘future’ is given all but a few cursory touches and left mostly sterile with not much to give it any weight, so it’s especially fun to see what they did with this momentary exchange, something that earns the only solid laugh in the movie. Well, if you don’t count Schwarzenegger himself grinning like a Cheshire cat for the first fifteen minutes. Seriously. I’m convinced he thought he was filming a kids movie.
The 6th Day is hardly the big man’s best work or even in his top ten movies, but as a sci-fi mystery, it’s got some legs, mostly if you’re willing to overlook a few lapses and limitations. Having the XFL featured as the game of the future (the real sports league debuted that same year and ended after one season … though maybe, if certain people have their way, this movie is predicting the future) is kinda of weird, but so is much of the story. Silly as it is, it’s definitely worth a sit-through, if only to enjoy some whacky Arnie action and a sharp satirical quip on police procedures of the future.