The 6th Day

The science fictional premise is nearly identical to that of John Varley's short story "The Phantom of Kansas" (which can be found in his book The Persistence of Vision): In the near future, human cloning has been perfected and adult clones can be grown in a short period of time. Moreover, a person's mind can be recorded onto disc and injected into the clone's mind, yielding an effective way of "backing up" a person if they should happen to die. The difference is that in "Phantom", this procedure has led to the creation of a whole new arm of the insurance industry. In The 6th Day, human cloning has been outlawed, but entrepreneur Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) has founded the hugely successful RePet animal cloning industry, has become perhaps the most powerful man in the US, and is secretly cloning humans.

Schwarzenegger plays Adam Gibson, a private helicopter pilot along with his partner Hank Morgan (Michael Rapaport), who are hired one day to ferry Drucker up a mountain on a skiing trip. That evening, Gibson heads home for his birthday party, to find his exact double celebrating with his family and friends! Then a team of assassins arrive to execute him, and it soon becomes clear that Gibson was accidentally cloned, and one of them is sure to be executed unless he can do something.

As an action flick, the film naturally features a car chase, several shootouts, some clever planning on Gibson's part, Drucker's bumbling henchmen, and plenty of spiffy special effects. (The most impressive SFX involve the jet-helicopter stunts.) Plus, there are the appropriate number of jokes about a person existing twice - I'd have been terribly disappointed in a Schwarzenegger action film that didn't meet its one-liner quota.

The story actually plumbs the depths of its premise fairly effectively, making intelligent use of the implications of cloning and of being able to read a mind onto a computer disc. One could argue that being able to grow adult clones in a few hours is ridiculous, but at least the film plays fair and tells us this up front. Its main flaw is just that it relies a little too much on the characters being stupid at times, as for example the mix-up which kicks off the whole story seems essentially the result of carelessness.

Overall I'd have to agree with Subrata: It's not a bad film, it's not a great film. It's a popcorn action film, no more and no less.

After having lunch, Subrata went off to help some friends move, whereas I came home to do my laundry.

You might recall that the washer in my building is broken. Well, it was still broken today, so I located a laundromat and bundled up all my clothes to go there. Actually, it turned out to be nearly painless: Thanks to the larger size of the driers, it cost almost exactly the same as it would have cost to do it at home, and I sat around for an hour and a half reading while doing four loads in parallel. Not bad, all-in-all.

Afterwards I called Lucy to see if she was interested in Borrone, but it turned out that she was going to a party for some friends tonight. So instead I drove up to the Stanford Mall and did some Christmas shopping (Woo-hoo! I've started!), and then went to Borrone myself. There I encountered Anders, a fellow Apple cow-orker who works with John, and we sat around for a while and talked.

He eventually took off, and I spent the rest of the evening finishing Dorothy Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, which was okay, but far from being one of the strongest entries in the Peter Wimsey series.

Finally, I learned that I've hit the magic boundary of ten points in Bob Rokazis' Anything Goes Trivia, a mainly comic book trivia contest that's been running for about a year and a half. Woo-hoo! I guess I'll receive some sort of prize from Bob (a longtime writer for DC Comics) sometime in the next month. Can't wait!