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> THE 6th DAY (2000)
Lately, the words "good movie" and "Arnold Schwarzenegger" have not been seen in the same review, but The 6th Day ended up being a nice surprise…

By John C. Lyons
Film Critic

Directed by: Roger Spottiswoode

Written by: Cormac Wibberley & Marianne Wibberley

Genre: Action/Sci-Fi

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Rooker, Robert Duvall

Our Rating: 8 out of 10

I cannot even remember the last Schwarzenegger movie I really enjoyed. Was it Eraser, True Lies, Terminator 2? I find it hard to think back that far. At any rate, after some sub-Arnold performances, with this film we action buffs get two Arnolds for the price of one, a pretty interesting plot, and the results ended up quite impressive. At 53 years of age I was beginning to believe that this generation of larger-than-life action stars were fizzling away, but The 6th Day brings fresh hopes to those of us who love the cool techno toys and high body counts.

The 6th Day covers a pretty neat, and not so far-fetched, idea that a human is secretly cloned, even with all the regulations preventing it, and that human is Adam Gibson (Schwarzenegger). One day Adam returns home from work to find his family and himself in his kitchen enjoying birthday cake. That's got to blow your mind, huh? As he tries to figure out what is going on he is being chased by some baddies that dressed themselves from the "Matrix" catalogue. Since they are employed by the same men that cloned him, they cannot be killed, and just get scooped up and re-cloned after Arnold blows them to bits. The film actually asks some good questions about the cloning dilemma. Is it really a good thing to be able to grow someone in a lab, implement their memories and send them back out into the world? In one scene, a doctor's wife is about to die, he tells her she will be OK because he can just clone her, however, she pleads with him to let her go, her time has come. This is not that far away from reality I am sure.

There are (of course) some new toys in the movie, which are pretty cool. Remote controlled futuristic helicopters, which really don't look as bad in the movie as they did in the previews. However, they could have used a bit more work. Virtual girlfriends that give you and your friends lap dances at the drop of a hat. Lots of laser guns to put nice sized holes in the walls. Oh yeah, and two Arnolds made everything pretty interesting. I was very impressed with how seamless the two were next to each other. The visual effects people really did a nice job here. The coloring matched perfectly when they were on camera together, and there was no awkwardness between the two as they pretended another guy was there beside them.

I was really rather surprised by how much I liked this movie. I thought Arnold's last film, End of Days, was OK, but I really felt he looked too old to be doing these kinds of movies anymore. I am happy to say that at 53, Arnold is still going strong and hopefully he can churn out some more films of at least this caliber. Now I am more excited for Terminator 3.

I took in this film at the Tinseltown theaters on upper Peach Street in Erie.

What I liked: Two Arnolds! The film had a good futuristic feel to it, similar to Total Recall. The storyline was interesting. Neat toys!

What I didn't like: The helicopter scenes could have used a little more work.

(00-1130)

related links:

The 6th Day - official page