2000 film directed by Roger Spottiswoode
The 6th Day is a 2000 American science fiction action film directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Goldwyn, Michael Rapaport, Michael Rooker, Sarah Wynter, and Robert Duvall. In the film, a family man of the future is illegally cloned by accident as part of a vast conspiracy involving a shady billionaire businessman, and is thrust into a struggle to clear his name and protect his family from the conspirators who seek to keep the cloning a secret. The title refers to the Judeo-Christian Genesis creation narrative, where God created mankind on the sixth day. The film was Terry Crews' acting debut.
Schwarzenegger received a salary of $25 million for his role in the film.[4] The film received mixed reviews and was a box office failure, earning $96 million worldwide on a budget of $82 million.
Plot
In 2015 animal cloning has become routine, following the success of Dolly the sheep's cloning, but human cloning is prohibited by so-called "Sixth Day" laws after a failed attempt.
Charter pilot Adam Gibson is hired for a snowboarding excursion by Michael Drucker, billionaire owner of cloning corporation Replacement Technologies, who requires him to undergo a seemingly routine drug test. When Adam’s wife informs him that their daughter’s dog has died, he reluctantly visits one of Drucker’s “RePet” cloning stores, while his partner Hank poses as Adam and flies Drucker to the mountains, where they are killed by an assassin, Tripp.
Buying a life-size animatronic “SimPal” doll for his daughter instead, Adam returns home to discover a clone of himself with his family. Before he can intervene, Adam is abducted by Marshall, Drucker’s head of security, and his agents Talia, Vincent, and Wiley. Adam escapes, killing Talia and Wiley, and goes to the police but is believed to be an escaped mental patient.
Drucker, somehow alive, assures reporters that he does not intend to have the Sixth Day laws repealed. However, he and his chief scientist, Dr. Griffin Weir, have already perfected illegal human cloning, and revive clones of Talia and Wiley. Adam breaks out of the police station and is forced to kill Wiley again, before finding Hank at his apartment, still alive. He brings Hank to his house and contemplates killing his clone, but Marshall and Talia arrive, forcing Adam to pose as his clone to send them away.
Returning to his apartment, Hank is again killed by Tripp, who is shot by Adam. A dying Tripp reveals he is an anti-cloning extremist who assassinated Drucker, who was subsequently cloned along with Hank. Marshall and Talia arrive, but Adam escapes in their vehicle after shooting off Talia’s fingers, taking her thumb to bypass the car’s biometric lock. Adam uses the thumb to sneak into Replacement Technologies and confronts Dr. Weir, whose pursuit of cloning is driven by his wife Katherine’s liver cancer; she reveals to her husband that she knows she is the latest in a series of clones he has made in an attempt to cure her.
Weir explains that the blood and vision tests Adam underwent scanned his DNA and memories — captured as a “syncording” — in the event he needed to be cloned. He reveals Drucker was secretly cloned after dying years earlier to maintain control of his fortune, as clones have no legal rights. Believing both Adam and Hank were killed alongside Drucker, Weir cloned them to return to their lives and cover up Drucker’s murder and second cloning. Weir gives Adam the syncording proving Drucker has been cloned, warning that he may go after Adam’s clone and family.
Adam races to Clara’s school recital, where Talia and Vincent have already abducted his wife and daughter. Coming face-to-face with his own clone, Adam reveals their situation, and agrees to deliver the incriminating syncording to Drucker in exchange for his family. Weir confronts Drucker, who engineered the clones, including Katherine, with shortened lifespans as an insurance policy against betrayal. Drucker kills Weir, promising to resurrect him and Katherine as clones.
Sending a decoy helicopter to be destroyed, Adam lands on Drucker’s helipad and wreaks havoc until he is captured. Drucker reveals that Adam is actually the clone, proven by a marking inside his eyelid, but realizes the real Adam has also infiltrated the building. While the original Adam rescues his family, his clone fights off Drucker’s agents. They are finally killed, and a mortally wounded Drucker clones himself again, but the malfunctioning equipment creates a deformed, incomplete body. Adam and his clone escape in the helicopter with his family, destroying the facility and all its syncordings as Drucker falls to his death.
The real Adam arranges for his clone, who is discovered to not have a shortened lifespan like the other clones, to start a new life in Argentina, running a satellite office of their charter business. As a parting gift, the clone gives the family Hank's RePet cat, and the real Adam gives his clone a flying send-off.
Production
Joe Dante was initially attached to direct the film, before Arnold Schwarzenegger signed on to star.[5]
The 6th Day was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[6]
Release
Theatrical
The 6th Day premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival.[1] It was released theatrically on November 17, 2000.
Home media
The 6th Day was released on VHS and DVD in the United States and Canada on March 27, 2001. The movie was released on video on the following dates:
| Release Date |
Territory |
Format |
Notes
|
| January 22, 2002 |
U.S. and Canada |
DVD |
Special Edition
|
| October 28, 2003 |
U.S. and Canada |
DVD |
Schwarzenegger Action Pack: The 6th Day and Last Action Hero
|
A Blu-ray version was released in the United States and Canada on April 8, 2008. It includes two featurettes but lacks the commentary from the DVD release.[7]
Reception
Box office
The film opened at #4 and grossed $13 million in its opening weekend. It eventually grossed $34 million in North America and $96 million worldwide,[2] while Variety reports $116 million.[3]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 40% based on reviews from 117 critics, with a rating of 5.9/10. The site's consensus reads: "This offering from Arnold Schwarzenegger contains an intriguing, disturbing premise, but the film's execution is too routine and formulaic to make good use of it."[8] On Metacritic the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on reviews from 30 critics.[9] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.[10]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave The 6th Day three out of four stars, remarking that it is not in the same league as Total Recall and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but that it nevertheless qualifies as a serious science fiction film. He also found problems with the cloning as depicted in the film, saying that "[his] problem with both processes is that while the resulting clone ... might know everything I know ... I myself would still be over here in the old container."[11] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times disliked the generic appearance of the film and Schwarzenegger's typecasting as an action hero. He gave the film two out of five stars.[12] Todd McCarthy of Variety called it: "A mostly standard-issue latter-day Arnold Schwarzenegger actioner spiked with a creepily plausible cloning angle."[13]
Accolades
The 6th Day earned three Razzie Award nominations for Schwarzenegger: Worst Actor (as the real Adam), Worst Supporting Actor (as the clone of Adam) and Worst Screen Couple (Schwarzenegger as Adam and Schwarzenegger as the clone), but lost all three to Battlefield Earth.[14] The film was also nominated four times at the 27th Saturn Awards,[15] but lost to X-Men for Best Actor and Best Science Fiction Film, Hollow Man for Best Special Effects and How the Grinch Stole Christmas for Best Make-Up.
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