Review of Sixth Day, The

Introduction

Regular visitors to DVD Reviewer will know that I’m a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although I accept that it’s unlikely that we’ll see anything to match Terminator 2 or True Lies again as he is getting a bit too old to be taken seriously in an action role.

Arnie’s recent fare has included Eraser (butchered by the BBFC in the UK to get down to a 15 rating) and End of Days, a modern day Omen, offering effects and noise and little else. In “The Sixth Day” Arnie returns to sci-fi, a genre that brought him huge success with Predator, The Running Man and Total Recall in the heyday of his career.

Video

As you would expect for a film made last year, the video is of a good standard, although it isn’t quite as crisp as it should be in places, with slight evidence of grain on a couple of scenes.

Visually the film relies heavily on special effects and CGI, some of which are impressive, some of which are laughable. For example, the first time we see the helicopters flying into the mountains, it looks like a CGI shot and is fairly unconvincing – this is repeated later during a night-time sequence in the city. Worse is a scene where Arnie jumps off a cliff, when the camera pans out I laughed – it was so obvious that the stuntman was on the end of a bungee rope (which is confirmed by a featurette). Other dubious effects include the Simpal, which looked to me like a very ugly child made-up to look like a robot, but is in fact a robot made up to look like a very ugly child, along with a scene inside a mall where the background has been digitally altered to include a monorail and futuristic buildings etc.

Apart from the above, the film looks ok, but borrows just a bit too much from other movies for comfort – most of the gadgets have been seen somewhere else before and there’s not much new on offer.

Moving away from the effects, there is plenty of action, with an entertaining car chase and several good shootouts helping to keep a reasonable pace throughout the film.

Audio

Before I go into the sound, let me draw your attention to a bad error on the packaging, which shows the soundtrack as Dolby Digital Stereo – it is in fact Dolby Digital 5.1. This sort of fundamental error will probably affect sales – I would not have bought this disc if I had thought it was not in 5.1. I was upset enough when my review copy came through the letterbox!

Like the video, the sound is good, but not quite as good as it should be, especially for a big budget action movie. The music pounds out of the speakers, but the sound from the rear seems slightly toned down and in general they are only audible during the shootouts and chases, which is disappointing given the use that could have been made of the soundstage for atmospheric sound and effects.

Features

Extra features include a composer’s commentary, making-of, featurettes, storyboard comparison, animatronics, TV spots and the trailer.

The main making-of featurette isn’t especially interesting, comprising a number of short interview clips of the cast and crew, with a great deal of film footage – a 15 minute narrated trailer if you like.

The nine behind-the-scenes featurettes are however very interesting and well worth watching – they all concentrate on certain aspects of the movie – from the helicopters to the car chase and the SimPal.

Conclusion

Overall, “The Sixth Day” is better than “Eraser” and “End of Days” but doesn’t offer enough to stand out from the crowd. The film is fairly entertaining but isn’t interesting enough to hold viewer concentration through the whole film – it does however pick up towards the end as the action intensifies.

The cast follows the usual formula – with Arnie as Arnie always is, not too much dialogue, plenty of action and some one-liners thrown in for good measure. Micheal Rooker is good as the villain, and manages to stick his chin out even further than usual! His accomplices follow the usual stereotypical future bad-guys – green hair and attitude etc. Robert Duvall, Michael Rapaport and Tony Goldwyn are also good.

Aside from a few dubious special effects, the film looks good, and the sound is also reasonable, and there is a good range of extras (some which were dropped from the US release after it was announced). There is some humour thrown in for good measure, and blokes will appreciate the virtual girlfriend, designed to be perfect…

To sum up, unless you are an Arnie die-hard, this is one to rent before you buy – it’s entertaining but not involving and just not good enough in the already crowded sci-fi action film marketplace.