The late 90's and early 00's felt to me like a clear nadir in cinema history. Gone were the days of 80's and 90's stunt-oriented action without the soulless sheen of CGI layered onto every new movie. It was the time period that gave us the rise of conveyor belt low budget U. S.-Canadian co-productions with the same assembly line group of Vancouver actors, including the rise of Uwe Boll, and similarly cut-and-paste films from tax shelter production companies / scams such as Franchise pictures. You were assured to have another low-brow crowd-pleaser in theaters every week, but crowds were starting to grow weary of these increasingly cynical glossy films with low-effort stories. In the midst of this slow spiral into junk-food entertainment came a chance for Arnold to revisit familiar sci-fi memory-theft territory as well as get to play multiple roles in the way Van Damme was already turning into an established science.
This movie comes off as so desperate to be liked, that it's hard not to toss it a little sympathy. There's so much attempt to gin up interest with NATURAL BORN KILLERS style MTv editing and lots of dutch angles and flashy split-screen effects. Crisp and dynamic camera movements showcase the bright and dynamic futuristic color pallet. All this pales in comparison to what Paul Verhoeven and Jost Vacano were able to accomplish 10 years earlier with Schwarzenegger's other big sci fi action adventure, TOTAL RECALL, a film that actually made you feel like you were stepping into another world with a sense of wonder.
Compared to RECALL, 6TH DAY, comes off as that untalented younger brother desperately vying for attention. There's plenty of interesting ideas here and a pretty good cast. Unfortunately the film falters right out of the gate by not really doing much with any of its potential. A lot of the cool ideas get thrown away immediately in favor of bland action scenes which lose all credibility considering Schwarzenegger is presented as a regular-guy Mr. Nice Guy helicopter pilot. Suddenly when push comes to shove, he's an invincible and fully agile sprinter, able to outwit, out-run, out-shoot, and out-McGuyver a bevy of incompetent villains. This all could have worked earlier in Arnie's career when he was in ultimate badass mode, but between this film and COLLATERAL DAMAGE, he just seemed to be getting ungainly, awkward, and subtly impatient as though he is just here for the money. At this time he was more like a parody of himself and no longer like the all-American/Germanic hero of days past.
Speaking of awkward, the frequent attempts to show Arnie's family life come off as some of the least believable of his career. His wife and daughter have practically no defining characteristics of their own considering how much we see them. Practically nothing emotional lands and there's this strange air of artificial and insincere goofiness in a film that purports to intelligently tackle some tricky subjects. The PG-13 rating certainly doesn't do any favors, lowering the brow of this already simian script even further to make it more kid-friendly. My guilty-favorite aspect of the film has to be the talking Sim-Pal Cindy doll, which is hilariously designed to look as creepy as possible. It's obvious the makers were copying the uncanny valley of Johnny Cab in TOTAL RECALL (with a touch of Chucky), but decide to give this concoction an inordinate amount of attention. She seems to be vaguely aware of what's going on, which makes things hilarious when the bad guys have her along for the ride in their car and she just mindlessly spouts platitudes of friendship to them as they speed along. The filmmakers obviously had it out for her though as she ends up taking on a nearly "Simpsons"-episode level of sadistic punishment. I'm surprised they didn't just go a little further and end with a money shot of several cars running over her head while she screams in pain.
So that sums up this movie in a nutshell; it just never quite goes far enough. It's tacky but never really funny, it's intriguing without being profound, and it's action-oriented without having an ounce of tension. Still for whatever reason, I have to revisit this film every few years as the very definition of guilty pleasure. I swear it's totally not just to see the creepy doll screaming and crying as it takes abuse. Okay, maybe it is.
