The 6th Day (2000)

Plot Outline: In a futuristic world, cloning pets is the norm. But cloning humans is illegal. That is until pilot Tom Gibson returns home one day to find that he's been replaced by a clone of himself. With his family and life taken away from him, Gibson stumbles upon a much larger plot regarding the illegal cloning of human embryos. With assassins trying to kill him, Gibson must find out just what is going on.

The Review: This isn't one of Arnie's best films but it ranks up there as one of the better of his recent attempts (anything has got to better than the dire Batman and Robin). The 6th Day has a plot that works because of it's relevance to today's obsession with cloning, obviously tailored to suit the needs of the undemanding action fan. But it's the action side that surprisingly lets it down. After a promising start the film just turned into a clichéd free-for-all with the usual action moments taped together in the vain hope that it looked good, plus a load of one-liners towards the end (some of the more humorous moments in this film are quite funny though). The stunts were nothing we haven't seen before and if you have, then they look worse here. You know, generic things like car chases, big exploding buildings, etc. As I've stated already, the plot wasn't bad. You could almost sympathise with Arnie at times when he saw his clone doing things he would normally do (celebrating birthday parties, getting off with his wife in the back seat of a car, etc, etc). The main problem though lies in the fact that Arnie can't act. He is lousy. Put him in a grunt-type role in an action flick and he's bad but you forget that when he's wasting people with uzis or rocket launchers. Put him in an acting role without the violence (or as much violence as other films in this film's case) and then you can see the cracks in his abilities. A more accomplished actor would have played on the emotional side a little more but because it's Arnie, we know he's going to kick some serious ass for messing with his life.

Final Verdict: The 6th Day is a by-the-numbers action flick which is pretty undemanding to watch and enjoy but with a big star like Schwarzenegger as the muscle, you just expect a hell of a lot more. Where are the modern-day Total Recalls, Predators and Commandos?

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