THE 6TH DAY (2000)

The title refers to the quote from the Bible that “On the 6th day, God created man.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger runs a helicopter service that flies rich people from the city, up to the mountain so they can ski, snowboard or whatever… He is married and has a little girl. His partner in the business is Michael Rapaport.

The film takes place in the future, it doesn’t say when, just that it’s the near future. Everything is pretty cool in the future with holograms, autopilots and pretty realistic TV.

The big thing going though is cloning. Not humans, that has been outlawed, but rather pets. Whenever your pet dies, just have it cloned and you’ve got it back.

There is however a company that is doing human cloning run by Drucker played by Tony Goldwyn with the help a scientist played by Robert Duvall. They have perfected the human cloning process with the use of system called syncording where you have your eyes scanned and they get a disc copy of your brain. They also use “blank” full grown bodies they have stored. This way, a human can be fully cloned in about 2 hours. Such is the case of the XFL’s top quarterback who is killed during a game but is then cloned and brought back for the 2nd half without anyone knowing.

Drucker hires Arnold to take him up on the slopes but requires that Arnold and Rapaport first take a few test for “insurance” reasons. They each give blood and do an eye test but they are actually giving a DNA sample and a syncording of their brain.

It’s Arnold’s birthday so Rapaport poses as Arnold and takes Drucker up so Arnold can be at home with his wife. Drucker is real paranoid of getting killed and for good reason. When they reach the summit, an anti-cloning wacko is there waiting and he kills everyone.

We then see Arnold at a pet store inquiring about getting his dead dog cloned for his daughter. He decides instead to get her a sim-doll, a very realistic doll for kids. When Arnold gets home, he looks in the window and there is a party going on and in the middle is Arnold blowing out his candles. Huh?

Then a couple people approach him and tell him to come with them. They try too kill him but he escapes and in doing so, they are killed. (don’t worry, they just get cloned again and reappear a few hours later.)

Turns out that after Drucker was killed, he was cloned. He thought it was Arnold that flew him and was also killed so to put everything back in it’s original place, had Arnold cloned so nobody would know anything… (Follow that?)

For the next hour or so its just back and forth between the bad guys chasing Arnold, trying to kill him, only to have Arnold kill them, they get cloned again and start over. Arnold doesn’t want to tell his family because then they would know too much and they would probably be killed.

Duvall’s wife it turns out is cloned and she’s dying of cystic fibrosis. It seems that Drucker has implanted every clone with a DNA disease that will kill each of them within 1-5 years just to be sure that the clones don’t become too powerful. Duvall quits and doesn’t want his wife to be cloned again. Drucker, knowing he needs Duvall, says fine, and he kills Duvall instead and says he will just clone him and his wife again, so all will be back to normal.

Towards the end, the bad guys finally figure out that the only way to get Arnold is to kidnap his wife and daughter which they do. It takes place at the daughters school play with the cloned Arnold and his wife there. The wife and daughter get kidnapped and the two Arnolds finally meet. They become a team and come up with a plan to get Drucker.

Arnold contacts Drucker and set up a meeting place at Drucker’s headquarters. Drucker explains to Arnold that he is the clone and that the clone is actually the real Arnold.

A shootout takes place and Drucker is killed but just before he dies, clones himself again. During the cloning process, the cloned Arnold disrupts everything and destroys the machine making Druckers clone in complete. He’s alive, just not fully formed yet. Druckers clone has a shootout with the two Arnolds but while standing on some ceiling windows, falls though, falling hundreds of stories down to his death.

The final scene shows the cloned Arnold saying good-bye to the real Arnold family. He is taking one of their helicopters and will begin his own business in Argentina.