Heavy Action: THE 6TH DAY

by Patrick Bromley

In which Arnold does sci-fi. Again.

2000 was a real turning point for Arnold Schwarzenegger. In reality, the turn had already happened: Eraser was pretty much his last Golden Age success and by the end of the '90s he was taking supporting roles in Batman & Robin or trying to shake up his image by appearing in End of Days, a horror movie in which he fights the Devil. While both movies were technically hits -- End of Days more than doubled its $100 million budget worldwide -- it was hard to shake the feeling that Arnold, once the biggest star on the planet whose run of successful movies defined the late '80s and much of the 1990s, was on the ropes.

Looking back now, it's also hard not to feel like turning the page into 2000 also marked the end of an era (era) for Schwarzenegger. Even though his star had fallen a little by the end of the '90s, we still reflect on his stature in a movie cumulative way: he owned the decade. Similarly, the 2000s are defined not so much by the movies he made, of which there are few, but by his turn into politics. He would make only a couple more movies before hanging it up for a decade to become elected Governor of California, and though he would return to movies in the 2010s, it was hard to deny that his biggest days were behind him. The movie industry had changed so much during his political career that there was no longer room for his kind of outsized action and screen persona.

Despite being released in 2000, The 6th Day feels like a product of Schwarzenegger's post-Governator career because it feels just like a movie in which he's trying to recapture his Glory Days despite practically still being in them. He plays Adam Gibson, a pilot living in the highly futuristic world of 2015 in which cloning has become perfected by outlawed for humans by the "6th Day laws." You can probably already guess where this is going. He returns home one day for his daughter's birthday and discovers that a clone of him is already there celebrating, causing Adam to go on the run to discover the truth of his existence and bring down the company responsible for going clone crazy.

Unlike some of his Heavy Action contemporaries, Schwarzenegger regularly returned to the sci-fi genre after getting launched to stardom with The Terminator. (Only Jean-Claude Van Damme has made as many sci-fi movies if not more.) From Predator to Total Recall to all the Terminator sequels with which he is involved, Schwarzenegger has found some of his biggest successes inside science fiction probably because he fits in so well there -- how else to explain his very existence than within a world in which anything is possible? Him returning to the genre at a time in which he was clearly struggling to figure out his place in the changing Hollywood ecosystem makes total sense. The 6th Day, however, might have been the wrong vehicle in which to do it. Whereas most of Arnold's movies felt like Capital E Events, this one has real Programmer vibes -- not bad, but weirdly unremarkable. It comes up in movie discussions about as often as Jet Li's The One, another oft-forgotten sci-fi actioner in which an action star plays multiples -- that is to say not very often. Sorry to all you One-heads for the drive-by.

If this was a DTV JCVD title, it might be more fitting. That guy loves to play doubles of himself! But also there's a transient quality to the filmmaking: the movie has a tacky sort of cheapness to it, a flatness to the photography, and a flash that's trying way too hard to be "of the moment" that it feels like something that's meant to exist in 2000 but not last. As a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger, The 6th Day is pretty underwhelming. Maybe part of the issue is that it comes up short in delivering its biggest sell, which is the opportunity to see two Arnolds acting opposite one another. The nature of the plot demands that they be the exact same character -- same memories, same personality, same abilities -- meaning there's no fun in seeing them interact, only that there is two of them. The divide-and-conquer approach that the two take for the climax also means we don't get to see them share a ton of screen time, either. I would much rather see Schwarzenegger take on a Double Impact -- or, the very least, a Multiplicity -- than what it is he's asked to do here.

But Arnold isn't the issue with The 6th Day. That comes down to the screenplay and the filmmaking. The movie is written by the husband and wife screenwriting team of Cormac and Marianne Wibberly, here billed separately on their first produced credit but who would later willingly be billed on screen simply as "The Wibberlys" (for movies like the Shaggy Dog remake). They've contributed to some stuff I've liked, including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and the National Treasure films, but their scripts tend to be overly busy and less focused on "character" than "stuff." Also I have a hard time excusing screenwriters or filmmakers who go by cutesy names. Looking at you, "The Drews." Also McG.

In the hands of the right director, this could maybe still work! I'm just not sure Roger Spottiswoode was the right guy for the job. He has a real "for hire" approach that I like for his workmanlike movies such as the super underrated Shoot to Kill -- he even made a Bond movie I like! (Tomorrow Never Dies) -- but he's also got credits like Air America and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot that remind me he's maybe not able to overcome weak material. He doesn't have a take on The 6th Day or even on the future in which it takes place; he's just on hand to execute the script and make questionable stylistic choices (an overreliance on post-production slow-mo chief among them). This kind of movie demands the demented weirdness of a Paul Verhoeven. I know Paul Verhoeven, and you, Roger Spottiswoode, are no Paul Verhoeven. He continues to direct but this would up being his last major studio release, I'm guessing because it barely cleared it's $86 million budget at the box office. That probably has something to do with it being marketed via an all-timer bad movie poster.

That's not to say there isn't any weirdness. There are flashes here and there of a better, more original movie. Sometimes it's the undercooked Tony Goldwyn clone in the movie's climax, a gag (pun intended) actually worthy of Verhoeven. Sometimes it's the henchmen who keep getting maimed and murdered only to be respawned for the same thing to happen again. Sometimes it's the SimPal life-size doll that Schwarzenegger buys for his daughter, legitimately one of the most fucked up things ever put in front of a movie camera. I think it's just a function of the filmmakers not having the budget or the technological capabilities to build what they wanted but the fact that they wound up using genuine nightmare fuel ends up being either unintentionally, or, if I'm being generous, intentionally funny. What I'm saying is that it's really saying something when Michael Rapaport's wig is not the most upsetting thing in this movie.

I don't love The 6th Day as much as I wish I did, but I can still watch it pretty much any time I'm in the mood for glorified SyFy action. As much as I dig Schwarzenegger in superhuman mode -- his factory setting -- I do kind of like when he plays against type and does a clueless Hitchcockian everyman trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. A lot of shit gets shot with laser guns, and I'm always down for that. Michael Rapaport gets killed twice. There are things to like. But the landscape was changing or had already changed by 2000. Movies were different. Even two Arnolds couldn't split that difference.