I’m not saying that Swartzeneggar has lost it. Wait, I am saying that Swartzeneggar has lost it. Think Rutger Hauer with a large budget. I guess you could argue that it is not Arnold’s fault that the people who wrote The 6th Day are total morons. I’m not going to argue that, but you could. Well, actually you might have some trouble. Consider that the movie is set in the future and it opens with an XFL game. Really.
In the future, cloning is a big issue. “They” tried to clone a human and the results were bad in some way which is never discussed. Now it is illegal to clone humans. Although pets and whatever else can be cloned. Schwartzeneggar is your average boring American dad, complete with a conservative agenda. He likes everything the old-fashioned way. From his bananas to his pets to his 1958 Cadillac, nothing new appeals to Arnie. Except for the brand-new remote-control unit on his helicopter. Oh yeah, Mr. Normal owns a helicopter company and he’s a pilot. Then for some reason he gets cloned and loses his family. For seven hours. This really upsets him. Ah, I should mention that the entire movie takes place over the course of two days. Some characters get cloned and brought back to life as many as three times.
Let me just go right to the end of The 6th Day and explain why it is such a lazy, bad, stupid movie. Arnold befriends his clone and together they kill all the bad guys and save the family. However, Mommy and little what’s her name don’t know there are two Daddy’s. For a moment imagine that there was another you. Not a twin, but a literal fucking clone. Wouldn’t you be like, “OK, you get the wife and the little brat for six months while I go and pound as much poon as possible. Then we’ll switch.” Or maybe you would say, “If I touch your penis, is that gay? I mean, you are genetically speaking me therefore it’s my penis. Yet you are a totally separate entity. I really want to touch your penis. But is that gay?” You might even just decide to kill the clone, because one of you is enough. Point is, you would say something. You would figure something out, hopefully something thought provoking. Instead, the lazy hacks who wrote this pile of a movie choose to have the clone go on a three-week boat ride (on an oil tanker!?!) to think about things. That is the resolution the writers give us. How stupid and weak! No imagination, no intelligence, no nothing. They just took what to them looked like a hot issue and turned it into an (yawn) action flick. Real science fiction deals intelligently with larger issues. Y’all remember how Tron asked if computers had a soul one decade before people were ready to deal with the question? Let me put it this way; when human cloning becomes a real issue that we as the public are going to have to think about and deal with, we are not going to look to The 6th Day for any help or insight.
Every scene is basically an insult to your intelligence. Right from the opening pre-credit, where the filmmakers try to lend credibility and weight to the impending impotence of the film by quoting the book of Genesis, director Roger Spottiswoode (Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and Turner & Hooch) is in way over his head. Here is an example of just how retarded everything is. The bad guy tells Arnold that he is in fact a clone, and has been cloned many times. One of the characters (Sarah Wynter) cannot even remember how many times she has been cloned.
The bad guy tells Arnold that not only that, but everybody he has been fighting is a clone, including Arnold himself. Arnold of course doesn’t believe this. The bad guy explains that there is a way to check. Inside your lower eyelid they imbed a little square each time you are cloned. The Wynter character pulls down her eyelid and we see 4 squares. She can’t fucking remember four squares, two of which have happened in the last 24 hours! Fuck Cormac and Marianne Wibberley for being the worst dialogue writers currently working. And fuck the director for not saying, “Couldn’t we make it like 14 instead of 4?” Anyhow, the whole movie is pretty much like that. One giant insult after another.
I am curious about what Robert Duvall did and to whom. Maybe somebody has some funny pictures of him. But why would an actor of his caliber do a pile of stinking crap film like The 6th Day? He did the miserable Gone In Sixty Seconds remake just before this movie, so he must be paying off some sort of debt. There was actually a scene between Duvall’s Dr. character and the bad guy (Tony Goldwyn – Friday the 13th part VI: Jason Lives) that was almost decent. The two talked about the ethics of cloning and didn’t mention Schwartzeneggar’s character or his boring, boring family even once. Of course, the bad guy shoots and kills Duvall by the end of the scene.
There is one funny part where Schwartzeneggar tells the bad guy to clone himself so he can go fuck himself. Be warned though, that is it. And even that part gets abused a few minutes later. The 6th Day offers very little in the way of entertainment and somehow less in the area of scientific debate. Basically, you have a generic action flick with the Republican Party’s take on how things should be. Pass.
Ruthless Ratings
- Overall: 2
- Direction: 3
- Acting: 3
- DVD Extras: 2
- Rewatchability: 0
- Writing: 0 degrees Kelvin
Special Ruthless Ratings
- Number of times you realized this ain’t Commando: 29
- Number of times you realized this might as well be Kindergarten Cop: 26
- Number of times you cringed at the presented idea that a human could be fully cloned with every memory the DNA donor ever had in about fifteen minutes: 12
- Number of times you cringed at the awful, trite, stilted and horrible dialogue: 407
- Number of times you thought the movie was actually part of a larger right-wing conspiracy bent on instilling boring, middle of the road opinions in movie viewers: 17
- Number of times you felt bad that Arnold can’t seem to get himself into a decent movie anymore: 2