The Film
Politics aside, remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be, you know, cool? That was of course before his fascination with his cinematic self reached its peak in 1993 with the bizarre Last Action Hero, after which he had trouble finding an audience again. One of many overblown misses was 2000's The 6th Day, a would-be sci-fi thriller that broke little new ground. Instead we are served a laundry list of action movie clichés: relentless bad guys with bitchin' handguns and laughable aim, evil corporations and a "Who the hell am I?" protagonist, distant shades of Arnold's Total Recall character. And a lot of stuff blows up, naturally.
The filmmakers are ultimately too in love with all of the whiz-bang faux technology they've created, and with the surrounding moral tempest thought up by the writers, specifically in response to humanity's newfound ability to clone itself in the near future. Pets can be legally cloned, but not people. However, is someone secretly conducting human cloning experiments anyway? And can one man expose the truth? What if he has some identical help? Can you guess if the smarmy industrialist with the out-of-control ego will get away with his scheme? If not, have you ever seen a movie before?
Need a second opinion? See Joe Lozito's review of "The 6th Day."
The Picture
Those expecting this big-budget, Arnold Schwarzenegger event movie to be a killer demo disc along the lines of T2 will be disappointed. There is often a twitchiness to the 2.4:1 image, with grainy darks and frequently washed-out, unnatural backgrounds. Blacks can be a blotchy affair, with strange, distracting blobs appearing sometimes. In short, there's more to dislike than like in this presentation.
The Sound
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio does have its showoff moments, with very aggressive surrounds at times and respectable bass reinforcement. The soundstage comes to full life at a football game (the XFL: how quaint!), both the on- and off-field activity, or during a destructive high-speed car chase/shootout. A pair of "whisper craft"--high-fallutin' helicopters of tomorrow--are also showcased prominently, flaunting some solid multichannel action. This disc also arrives enhanced for D-Box Motion Systems.
The Extras
The bonus section regurgitates an old Showtime behind-the-scenes program in addition to movie-to-storyboard side-by-side comparisons and a look at the animatics, the crude digital pre-production animations of some key scenes. The complete propaganda video created for the RePet cloning service shown in the movie is here, uninterrupted, along with a shorter TV commercial. Nine featurettes focus on different aspects of the production, viewable either separately or collectively, under the title "On the 6th Day."
This release is noteworthy as Sony's first catalog title to be exploit the BD-Live feature, and only their second BD-Live title ever, alongside Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, ably reviewed by our editor Chris Boylan. Accessible via the Extras menu, the BD-Live option automatically connects to the Internet (if your hardware is so configured), and proffers the following explanation:
"BD-Live can allow you to download a variety of up-to-date content (e.g. refreshed previews, ringtones, exclusive special features and events)."
Little of that is provided for The 6th Day. We can download six Blu-ray and three theatrical movie previews, in both standard- (why?) and high-definition, but I usually don't even mention trailers among special features since, well, they aren't "special." They're commercials. While this disc does indeed support BD-Live, I will not list that below as a bonus, as there is no unique content per se included. BD-Live starts with a whimper. Let's hope they make more out of it... and soon.
Final Thoughts
There are better action movies, better science fiction movies, and better Arnold Schwarzenegger movies than this, and definitely better Blu-rays.
Where to Buy:
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