The 6th Day

In his storied film career, Arnold Schwarzenegger has stood up to and taken down monstrous ogre-beasts, drug cartels, Russia, aliens, invincible cyborgs, Arab terrorists, and (most recently) Satan with only his guile, his muscles, and more ammunition than the Swiss Army will ever need or want. So when, in "The 6th Day," Schwarzenegger goes toe-to-toe with modern biotechnology, we're confident that Schwarzie will quickly dispatch it, even though it is an abstract entity. Give him a flamethrower, five or six handguns and a howitzer, have him dispatch the mutant freaks, stride off into the exploding distance, end of film, audience applauds. Right? Nope. This film's dirty little secret, which heavily edited previews have tried to hide from you, is that "The 6th Day" is more of a thriller with action components than a straight-up action film.

"The 6th Day" presents a realistic near-future genetic-engineering dystopia where death is no more certain than Florida's presidential vote tally, and some people are exceptionally invested in keeping our final rest up in the air. As a lark, they decide to clone Schwarzenegger, but they neglect to kill the original. Thus there are two Schwarzies running around, both of whom stake a claim to his loving family, and only one of whom was grown in a lab instead of the womb. A dilemma indeed. But does Schwarzenegger strap armaments to himself and shoot up the lab until one of the survivors gives him some answers? No. He crafts an intelligent plot to take out the lab, full of double-crossings and mistaken identities. During the plot, he even has intelligent conversations with the villain about existential issues! Even though these conversations are punctuated with moronic but memorable profanity, this is not the Schwarzenegger we thought we knew.

This film takes a while to spin up, with a long exposition full of wooden acting by Schwarzenegger; pretending to love his family or his job has never been his strong suit, and his diatribes against cloning and in favor of the natural process of death sound a lot less convincing than they might if they came from a better actor. Thankfully, the exposition is also full of good performances, including Tony Goldwyn as a smooth-talking businessman who eventually turns out to be pure evil, and Robert Duvall (yes, Robert Duvall) as Dr. Griffin Weir, the genius behind the cloning of fish and wheat for food and the cloning of pets for fun. The exposition is also full of extremely grim humor, as when the salesman for RePet keeps mentioning smarmily that the replacement animals are insured, or when Schwarzie buys a grotesquely lifelike SimPal for his daughter. While this is enjoyable in its own way, neither the filmmakers nor the audience think that it can go on for a whole movie, and of course the intelligent thriller eventually makes its way onscreen.

As an intelligent thriller, this film ain't half bad. It's directed by a former Bond auteur, Roger Spottiswoode, who keeps the people moving, the cars chasing, the guns blazing and the sets menacing. The scarcity of awesome violence in "The 6th Day" should not automatically damn it. The tense confrontations of which thrillers are built mostly come up strong, especially a final showdown between a suddenly reluctant Duvall and an unrepentant Goldwyn that is quite chilling. But for all that, "The 6th Day" never quite grips you like a thriller really should. There's something missing.

That something is someone besides Schwarzenegger in the lead role. As much as we all love Ah-nold, anyone who has seen "Terminator 2" or "Commando" knows that his finest moments cinematically come when he is playing an invincible, remorseless killing machine. Well, Schwarzie is invincible in this film, but it just isn't enough. Hampered by a PG-13 rating, he is unable to really throw the tremendous violence up there, and so he has to fall back on his acting skills to give "The 6th Day" the dramatic impact he normally conveys with weaponry. Schwarzenegger can do many entertaining things on the screen, but acting is still not one of them. This is nothing to be ashamed of, but in this specific case it is unfortunate.

So this film's ultimate failure can be chalked up to a misuse of resources. It's an interesting failure; the dystopia is carefully crafted, and the supporting roles are (as noted above) admirably handled. Human cloning is even discussed in a scientifically and morally responsible fashion, and both Joe Lieberman and Orrin Hatch will welcome the pro-God, anti-excessive violence message. (There's even a joke about excessive violence in the media, which seems a bit disingenuous if you've seen "End of Days" or "Conan.") With someone like Will Smith or Mark Wahlberg starring, "The 6th Day" might have been both a moral film and a solid entertainment. But it's got Arnold, and that is both its blessing and its curse.

OOPS

Michael Sapoznikow was kind enough to point out, when this review was originally transmitted to the Spam-O-Matic, that I was flat-out wrong in calling the science in "The 6th Day" "realistic." It had a patina of realism! That was all I meant. But here's Mike, schooling us:

I also saw "The 6th Day," and the science is terrible. For what it's worth (and I'm not ruining anything with these) here's some observations:

When you clone an adult animal (including a human), you get a baby animal. actually a zygote (which is like a fetus, but smaller). Not an identical adult. It still takes 9 months gestation and a full childhood to get another adult. Your clone is no more similar to you than an identical twin would be. Except a hell of a lot younger.

For all that the movie claims to be "sooner than you think," there is absolutely no way to "download" the contents of a human brain onto a hard drive, and there's no prospect of being able to do that anytime soon. In fact, after taking a class on Neurosciences, I'm not sure that the concept makes any sense at all.

You (yes, you) are more than the sum of your DNA and your memories. The philosopher in me absolutely squirms at the idea that the entertainment industry is trying to tell us that, if you get a hard drive with some dude's memories and a sample of his DNA, you can clone him so that nobody can tell the difference. Anyone else out there uncomfortable with the implications of reducing our humanity (or pet-manity) that way? Anyway, it's factually wrong. There's a lot more to how Arnold looks (like diet and exercise) than just DNA.

The science was sloppy too. You don't get nosebleeds and faint when you're dying of cystic fibrosis. There are genetic diseases that could give you nosebleeds and make you faint before they kill you, and cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that kills you, but to show a lady dying of cystic fibrosis without any respiratory problems (like, for instance, coughing out gallons of mucus like happens in end-stage CF. I know what you're thinking-- thanks for sharing, Mike) is just sloppiness that a consultation with any regular doctor would correct. Seems like the scriptwriter picked "something genetic" at random, and through the process of making a movie that cost dozens of millions of dollars, nobody bothered to check the details.

I hate it when folks hit "reply all" to large lists, especially when they don't know everyone on there. For those of you who don't know me, hi, I'm Mike. I'm Andrew's friend in DC (you may remember me from such shout-outs as the Grinch column). I'm in Law School now, and thinking of maybe making a career in Bioethics (in other words, I know just enough genetics for this movie to cause me physical pain at times).

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