Some of the biggest criticisms of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies is that they’re mindless action. Granted by the 1980s, most filmmakers of action movies realized they didn’t need a complex story to go along with the action. People would watch it mostly anyway.
Yet, by the time the 1990s came on, Schwarzenegger had two of his best movies Total Recall and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. They were very well made movies with great plots. Total Recall examined the existential concepts of our lives. It also had Schwarzenegger playing two roles, as the hero and villain. And T2 raised issues about technology and the carelessness of those trying to see if they could but never questioning if they should as Joe Morton’s scientist is a modern-day Oppenheimer unaware of the damage he will unleash. It’s also worth noting that each time he’s played the T-800, he’s played a different variant. So, it’s like a stage actor changing up every performance.
But by the end of the 1990s, action movies had changed and The 6th Day seemed more like something that might have really been a bigger movie if it had been released in the mid-1990s. But following The Matrix, sci-fi action thrillers had to have more style and substance.
The movie is supposed to be set circa 2015 as it builds on the real-cloning of a sheep, Dolly. Cloning has been used in many movies but the cloning of humans in the world of The 6th Day is outlawed. Because of the PG-13 rating, a lot of what we’re told about human cloning is in exposition as a failed experiment. The government has outlawed it both for its cruelty and also its legal status. Thus, a clone has no rights because they’re not real people, despite being flesh and bone like everyone else.
The Boys from Brazil with Sir Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck had people trying to raise Adolf Hitler clones by having the clones as young teens go through the same life incidents as Hitler. There’s only one problem with this. We all experience things different. And our bodies are really just walking and talking chemistry sets.
The average lifespan of a Finn-Dorset sheep, which Dolly was, is 11-12 years. However, Dolly had to be euthanized on Feb. 14, 2003 as she had developed arthritis and progressive lung disease. One little change up can have a long-term effect. There’s also the question of eugenics people might be opposed to if cloning was ever used. The Island and its 1970s plagiarism source Parts: The Clonus Horror had rich people using clones to harvest their organs. It’s disturbing to think about.
In 6th Day, Schwarzenegger plays Adam Gibson, a former military pilot who has gone into private business with his charter pilot of helicopter/jet hybrids. On the day he’s supposed to transport billionaire Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) to the snowy mountains for a snowboarding trip, his wife, Natalie (Wendy Crewson), videophones and says the family dog, Oliver, had to be euthanized because of an illness. Their daughter, Clara (Taylor Anne Reid), doesn’t know yet because she’s at school. Natalie tells Adam to get Oliver cloned at RePet at the mall. But he’s opposed to it.
His friend and colleague, Hank Morgan (Michael Rappaport), tells Adam he’ll take Drucker on the trip so Adam can take care of replacing Oliver. As part of their contract, they had to do a blood test and an eye exam. However, Drucker’s people have collected their DNA and their memories on a “syncord” disc. But things go bad when Hank takes Drucker and his assistant to the snowboard outpost where all three are killed by Tripp (Colin Cunningham), an extreme religious fundamentalist who is against cloning.
At this point there are spoilers but anyone seeing the movie can guess what’s happening. Adam wakes up in a taxi as it arrives at the mall a little disoriented. You don’t have to be a genius to realize that Adam has been cloned as Drucker was going to set aside some complementary tickets to “Adam Gibson” for his XFL team. The 6th Day opened in mid-November 2000, two months before the XFL played its first (and only) season and then folded. By the time the movie hit the home video market, the league was already defunct.
While the twist is obvious that we’re now following the clone, it’s a nice twist in point of view. It also makes the original Adam an innocent victim as the Adam clone is chased by Drucker’s thugs, clones themselves. This is mostly a chase story during this middle but it does have some fun with the story. One of Drucker’s goons is Wiley (Rodney Rowland), a somewhat gullible and inept assassin. He keeps dying but his replacement clones complain that he can feel being crushed when run over by a car or has his neck broken by Adam’s clone. And it’s no surprise his name is Wiley as in Wile E. Coyote.
The story also has the Adam clone debating whether to kill his original self thinking it’s the clone, but stopping. I think this speaks about our human nature. Thinking Adam is the clone, he sees him as a pest but realizes he’s the type that can’t do it.
The plot never does really take a political or religious side but I feel Tripp is a representation of the extremists who would bomb abortion clinics or even the radical leftist Weather Underground who are more militant and violent. The thing is that Tripp killing clones proves nothing. He says there are moles working in Drucker’s offices but without the hard evidence of a clone, it’s pointless. Just as it’s pointless to kill doctors who perform abortions. Yet some extremists feel they are doing the Lord’s Work.
However, Adam is called an “atheist” by RePet protestors. Yet he tells Drucker that God is the one who should determine who lives or dies. It’s never revealed what happened to the original Drucker. It’s just mentioned he was killed some time before the movie’s time frame either in an accident or murdered. It’s like the line from Groundhog Day. It’s just one big crap shoot. George Burns smoked cigars and drank martinis well into his 90s and died shortly after turning 100. Fitness guru Jim Fixx dies in his early 50s of a heart attack while jogging.
That’s what makes life so important because it’s can end at anytime without much warning. But Drucker isn’t really wanting to revolutionize human life, he wants to have more control. At the beginning of the movie, the star quarterback of his team, Johnny Phoenix (Steve Bacic), is cloned after a tackle leads to permanent brain damage meaning he’d be in a coma until someone pulls the plug. So Drucker’s chief enforcer, Robert Marshall (Michael Rooker), pulls the plug anyway. And no one is the wiser.
Hower, Dr. Griffin Weir (Robert Duvall), is the chief scientist of the cloning program. He’s had his late wife, Katherine (Wanda Cannon), cloned because he was afraid to say goodbye just yet. Little does he know that Drucker has ordered Katherine’s clone to have cystic fibrosis, which leads to her death. This time, Weir lets her pass as the clone is aware of her existence and feels she shouldn’t be alive since Katherine has passed.
It’s this subplot that gives this movie more substance and complexity notably with how the Katherine clone works in her greenhouse on different gardening generations. There’s a scene earlier in the movie where Clara asks Adam if he wants a regular or nacho-flavored banana. This is a nice hint to the fact that originally bananas weren’t much edible as they were packed with hardened seeds.
Before there were computers and pesticides, farmers and botanists tweaked bananas over many generations to be edible. What we sell and eat is actually a fruit mutation through human interaction. Granny Smith apples are another cultivator that originated in Australia in the 1860s. I’ve known people go to Europe and eat and eat and eat only to come back to America having lost weight.
The 6th Day wasn’t one of Schwarzenegger’s most successful at the time and it didn’t even gross $100 million worldwide. There’s actually a wonderful story hiding behind all the chase scenes and shoot-outs in parking garages and on rooftops. Roger Spottiswoode replaced Joe Dante as director early on. I feel Dante would’ve leaned more into the science aspect. Spottiswoode was coming off the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies so I guess he wanted to make it more of a straight forward sci-fi action movie.
That being said, it still makes you wonder. Most children learn of death from their pets. If they can keep cloning them, is it good in the long run?
It is nice to see Drucker get his comeuppance after accidentally being shot by Wiley and it’s fatal. But a mistake in his cloning only results in about three-fourths being completed. And the dying Drucker has to watching the deformed clone take off his clothes before he passes. Well, they do say sharks are born swimming.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 