Muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger bombed in his attempt to become a comedic leading man in the Cary Grant mould. Without a gun in his beefy hands, his fans could care less.
But now the former steroid-popping bodybuilder is 53, obviously aging and fresh from a major heart operation -- which means the action genre is beginning to elude him, too.
Regardless, he won't say quit. Schwarzenegger stars in The 6th Day. It's a mixed message, a romantic and religious sci-fi thriller jacked up with laughs.
So the action is intercut with warm-hearted family-man scenes. Schwarzenegger now wants to be all things to all people. He ends up being less than satisfactory for everyone. Director Roger Spottiswoode seems more concerned with pumping up the special effects than making his hero believable.
The 6th Day is not a disaster, however. The premise, and the execution of it, is at least superior to Schwarzenegger's gunfight-for-God movie, the supernatural thriller End Of Days.
Actually, The 6th Day starts with a lot of promise that it will rise above the primordial muck. Set in a jazzed-up, hi-tech, near-future American city (and shot partly in Toronto), the movie is spun out on the idea that human cloning has been banned but allowed for all other forms of life on Earth.
Naturally, a bunch of mad scientists and businessmen are secretly cloning people for their own advantage. They will kill anyone who discovers their nefarious scheme.
Schwarzenegger plays a helicopter pilot with a loving wife (Wendy Crewson), a sweet daughter (Taylor Anne-Reid) and a stable family life. Arnie's biggest sin is sneaking a cigar in the garage (smoking is illegal).
These two extreme worlds collide in an eco-terrorist attack. In the series of misunderstandings that follow, Schwarzenegger gets cloned by accident, leaving two of him out and about.
Pretty soon, the madmen led by the villain (Tony Goldwyn) and the scientist (Robert Duvall) are out to kill both Arnies. So all hell -- plus a ton of special effects and elaborate stunts -- break out. The movie is reduced to a series of chases, fights and escapes from explosions or killer laser beams.
Ho hum, seen that before.
The 6th Day just gets leaden and methodical, predictable and boring, except for brief moments -- such as when Duvall demonstrates that a real actor can infuse even ludicrous situations with a spark of life.
Schwarzenegger, of course, is not a real actor. And two of him, sometimes on the screen together, is trouble times two, especially when both of him indulge in his familiar habit of tossing off bad-taste quips when he is killing a minor foe.
As for the family-man routine, that is just a plot device, as superficial as the movie's analysis of the real-life science of cloning. Our hero's wife and kid are put in peril to force both of him -- Arnie and the clone -- to act out their violent revenge.
What could have been a breakthrough for Schwarzenegger's middle age is just another mediocre mechanical thriller.
(This film is rated AA)
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