Well, why not. If you were going to clone a human being, would you start with, say, the person who changes your oil at Wal-Mart, or go with somebody bigger than life? (Speaking of which, does anybody remember the spurious 1978 book In His Own Image, which purported to be the factual account of an eccentric millionaire’s cloning and hinted the subject was Elvis?). And who’s bigger, or at least larger, than Schwarzenegger?
“In the near future – sooner than you think,” he plays Adam Gibson (clever name, nudge nudge – equal parts religious and cyberpunk), a veteran of something called the Rainforest War who now runs an extreme charter-flight service. One night he comes home, looks through his front window, and sees himself at his daughter’s birthday party. It turns out to be a big mistake that has something to do with Robert Duvall, anti-cloning fundamentalists, and a professional football-team owner. But you know it’s the future, because it’s an XFL franchise, and there are plenty of other futuristic trappings such as lap-dancing holograms, eternal pets, robot dolls, remote-control convertiplane helicopters, illegal smoking, and bazooka handguns.
Lensed by 007 director Roger Spottiswoode (Tomorrow Never Dies), The 6th Day has a lot of art-state action sequences, and there’s a funny running gag about a couple assassins who keep coming back from the dead. But unless you’re happy applying the Harley standard to Arnold (i.e., Harleys are always judged differently from other motorcycles; they cost more, leak more, and perform less than mass-market bikes from Japan, but still sell like crazy on the strength of their image), you might conclude that one of him onscreen trying vainly to emote his way out of a wet paper bag is enough. Two – that’s right out. C
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