Cinefantastique Online

There is something highly ironic about this week’s release of THE 6TH DAY on Blu-ray disc: The film is about cloning - more specifically, about continually cloning a pet or a person over and over again, so that just when you think the old one is gone and forgotten, a new version comes back. Isn’t Blu-ray technology doing the same thing? Taking old movies that should have died and bringing them back to life? First there was the film, then the DVD, now the Blu-ray disc. Who knows what new version the future may bring? The problem with cloning, of course, is that you’re stuck with a copy of the original, with all the flaws in tact, something that becomes rather obvious when re-viewing this failed effort to recapture the box office glory that Arnold Schwarzenegger had achieved with TOTAL RECALL and TERMINATOR 2. The problem is that 6TH DAY cannot match Schwzrzenegger’s best action efforts, and the harder it tries, the more it sabotages its own best interests, which lie in an interesting premise that could have yielded an intriguing science-fiction film without the obligatory gunfire and explosions.

Not that 6TH DAY needed to go the obscure art house route. Big-budget Hollywood movies can be a great format for taking on serious themes and dealing with them within the confines of popular entertainment. The treatment can be larger-than-life, almost operatic; and, as in opera, if the subtext isn’t handled delicately…well, people go for the arias, not the story. On the other hand, an interesting subtext can help distinguish a generic form of entertainment from its competitors. The appeal of “genre” entertainment is that it delivers the elements that fans want; however, if that’s all the film delivers, then it runs the risk of being merely formulaic. In the case of 6TH DAY, we have a film that has to deliver on several levels (it’s not only a combo of science fiction and action adventure; it’s also an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, with all that implies), but it also wants to present some serious ideas about the ethics of cloning. This attempt pushes the film in the direction of genuine science fiction (rather than just a techno-hardware thriller); unfortunately, it only goes part way.

On his birthday, helicopter pilot Adam Gibson (Schwarzenegger) decides to head home early and let his partner Hank (Michael Rapaport) fly a rich client named Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) to a ski summit. Drucker, the CEO in charge of a company that wants to overturn laws against cloning people, is assassinated by a fanatic opposed to cloning. His people clone both him and Adam, mistakenly thinking he was the pilot. Since the existence of two Adams is proof that Drucker’s company is illegally cloning humans, a team of assassins is sent to erase the problem.

The first, obvious problem with this scenario is that, even granting that Drucker’s company would clone Adam because they thought he was the one piloting the helicopter, why did they not realize their mistake until after they let him out of the laboratory? The film finesses (i.e., ignores) this point by simply not showing this scene and leaving the whole exposition-explanation for what happened until midway through the film, by which time (presumably) the audience will have forgotten to ask the question.

However, if you grant the film this suspension of disbelief, then undemanding viewers should find themselves reasonably diverted. The idea raises intriguing questions (what would you do if you came home one day to find that your clone had taken your place?), and the film makes some attempt to eschews the simple good-bad dichotomy of most science fiction morality tales. The script (credited to Cormac and Marrianne Wibberley) avoids painting the science and technology as intrinsically evil. (Adam originally considers all clones to be soulless things but comes to realize that his own clone has as much of a soul as he himself does.) Instead, the film wants to warn us about the potential, perhaps inevitable misuse and abuse of this power when in the hands of someone using it for personal advancement and profit, instead of for the general welfare of society.

All that is well and good, but this is still a Schwarzenegger movie, and when push comes to shove comes to blowing away bad guys, you know that 6TH DAY is not going to settle down into some thoughtful ruminations on the nature of identity. Although presented as a suspense-thriller, with Adam on the run from the bad guys, the real thrills comes not from any fear that the villains will catch our hero but from the explosions, gunfights, and car crashes that erupt at regular intervals. Fortunately, this barrage of firepower never totally overwhelms the science fiction element, but it does pull the film closer toward being a typical mindless “genre” piece. It’s still passable fun, but it’s not nearly as cool as it wants to be—closer to TOTAL RECALL than to ROBOCOP (the latter being a film that really does fuse its thematic material to its action elements in a totally satisfying way).

Balancing the film in favor of action rather than substance is no sin, but it would have helped if the action had been a bit less familiar. Director Roger Spottiswoode (TOMORROW NEVER DIES) knows how to deliver the requisite slam-bang-boom, but it looks a little dated the post-John Woo post-THE MATRIX era. In an odd way, the film is vaguely reminiscent of Charlton Heston’s early 1970s efforts, THE OMEGA MAN and SOYLENT GREEN. Heston was becoming old-hat at the time, but he kept plowing along as if nothing had changed. Schwarzenegger more or less does the same thing here, not realizing that it’s no longer hip and cool, only dated.

The tech credits are all solid, with some very nice visual effects suggesting the futuristic time setting of a world that, for the most part, resembles our own. The supporting performances are also good. Robert Duvall lends some dignity to the morally compromised doctor who’s perfected the cloning method, and Michael Rooker brings his usual intensity as one of the villains, but Sarah Wynter is the real standout as the female assassin Talia. Schwarzenegger does his usual thing: he embodies the role physically and keeps his attempts at emoting within manageable levels to avoid exposing his limitations as an actor. He may not be a virtuoso, but he is usually smart enough to stay within his limited range of notes. Only Tony Goldwyn falls short. His is a standard issue corporate villain, without the grandiosity of the best Bond baddies or the believable grounding that would make us accept him as a more realistic antagonist.

When all is said and done, 6TH DAY is a movie-movie: you don’t really believe the story or care about the characters; you just go along for the roller-coaster ride and hope it doesn’t derail. Despite the pretension toward a more serious kind of subject matter, this is the kind of film in which an unarmed man, fed up with the illegal shenanigans, will tender his resignation to his evil bs, and absolutely everyone in the audience knows that the boss is going to pull out a gun and shoot the guy. So why is the underling too stupid to figure out what is obvious to us? It’s just one of those de rigueur movie moments that you’re supposed to accept, because you gotta give the bad guy lots of opportunities to do very bad things.

Also, if you’re familiar with science fiction cinema, you will find many of the plot elements familiar. TOTAL RECALL has been mentioned often while the film was in production; the parallels are not that specific, but there is a general similarity to some of the themes in the work of Philip K. Dick (whose fiction provided the inspiration for both RECALL and BLADE RUNNER). There are echoes of less familiar films, such as THE RESURRECTION OF ZACHERY WHEELER, which also included genetically neutral drones that could be quickly adapted into clones for the purposes of transplants without the problem of tissue rejection. Not only that, 6TH DAY even borrows the idea of using these transplants as political leverage to control a senator.

Coincidence or not, we shouldn’t blame the film for borrowing ideas when they’re good ones. For all its failures, at least, 6TH DAY bothers to try on a few ideas; even if it doesn’t develop them, this is still more than can be said for many Hollywood blockbusters. If you’re only interested in the action, this is no must-see, but you could do worse. This is no TERMINATOR 2, but at least it’s not END OF DAYS.

 DVD AND BLU-RAY DETAILS

The first 6TH DAY DVD arrived in 2001. At that time, bonus features were limited to a “RePet” commercial, a few trailers, and an isolated music score with commentary by composer Trevor Rabin. One year later saw the release of a Special Edition DVD that included several more bonus features.

The Blu-ray disc (released on April 8, 2008) offers slightly improved picture and sound (the problem being that there is only so much you can do with an eight-year-old movie shot on film, the grain of which can show up in high-def transfers). The disc omits the isolated soundtrack-commentary but ports over these other features from the old special edition DVD:

• Showtime Special: The Future is Coming is one of those short promo pieces posing as a documentary
• Two Animatics of the scenes using computer-generated imagery
• On The 6th Day: a more substantial documentary about the making of the film
• Storyboard Comparisons: three sequences shown with the storyboards in the top of the frame
• RePet Infomercial & TV Spot: the phony commercials for the fictional company in the film.