Arnold Schwarzenegger will be
the last to admit that he belongs in a rocking chair and not in an action movie.
What’s more, he’ll go to great lengths to prove that he can still jump, run and
shoot portraying not one, but two characters. His latest attempt to rekindle his
Terminator fire is titled Sixth Day, for a very specific reason. The first recorded case of
cloning tells us that God created Man on the Sixth Day according to his own image. The
movie starts off in a close future ("closer than you think", it says) where the
technology is advanced enough to allow cloning of animals. Cloning of humans, after a
failed experiment we do not witness, is banned. But, there’s a tycoon called Drucker
(Tony Goldwyn), the modern self-proclaimed incarnation of God, who clones humans he
particularly thinks are worth it. The procedures are supervised by Doctor Weir (Duvall),
and performed in his state-of-the-art laboratory. Arnold’s character is, not likely
by accident, named Adam Gibson, and he’s a chopper pilot in an extreme sports travel
agency. He’ll learn that he’s been cloned, but he’s not going to watch
peacefully at his mirror image taking over his life, making him a fugitive and hunted
prey. Somewhere along the way, he’ll proclaim "I know who I am".
As any intelligent
moviegoer can expect, Sixth Day is nothing more than a star vehicle, with majority of the
budget going to Arnold’s paycheck and special effects. Arnold seems to be having fun,
even though he looks a bit awkward as a lover and husband. Highlight of the movie is a
line "I might be back", witty paraphrase of his trademark one-liner from
Terminator. The action sequences are rather well crafted, and highlights include the
helicopter-jet-planes chases. The science is kept to a minimum, and some of the scenes in
the lab are pretty gross. The script didn’t waste too much time on characters, and as
a result, the bad guy is really bad, the cynical mad-scientist type, while the others are
thankful to get a handful of scenes. With those limited resources, some actors made a few
impressions, like Michael Rappaport (Men of Honor) in the role of Arnold’s goofy
sidekick and Rodney Rowland, who always has a bad luck to be killed by Arnold moments
after Drucker and Weir resurrect him. Sixth Day may be a classic potboiler that will be
forgotten by Christmas, but Arnold needs to take a long hard look at his date of birth and
rethinks his career as an action star.