I was pleasantly surprised with how good the not very favorably reviewed 6th day was. It delivered in several ways:
- It has the expected action, stunts, effects.
- It has the expected one-liners and humor.
- Acting is generally perfectly adequate for the purpose. Rather, it must be pretty good when I never was disturbed by any bad acting.
- It is nicely futuristic in a near-future fashion with many perfectly or partially believable ideas (and some that we don't quite believe in, but hey, if we accept hyperspace travel then we can accept this).
- It has a message that actually keeps us thinking after leaving the movie. The cloning problem is considered from many points of view (not only as the bad guy's evil plan). How far can we heal, how far can we preserve life, when does it become an ethical problem, when will it clash with religion?
That is quite impressive if you ask me.
However, sometimes it fails on two points: Predictability and suspense. Some scenes, especially involving the bad guy, are so embarrassingly predictable that it makes me wish they could have skipped some clichés just for once. And the movie misses great suspense opportunities on several occasions. I won't tell you how, who or when, but when a guy is assassinated, it should not happen just out of the blue, but we should be led into the situation slowly (for example from the assassin's point of view) so we get the chance to worry about it. That opportunity is missed at least twice, when the movie jumps straight into the kill, giving us momentary cheap shock instead of thrill. Compare it to the killing in, for example, Predator (one of the most excellent Arnold movies). Most kills by the Predator don't come out of the blue, we are warned, and it adds suspense and thrill.
Those flaws push the movie down from the top marks, but I still rank it pretty high for the points mentioned above. Quite entertaining and even interesting too, which makes it one of the better Arnold movies. Recommended!
