The 6th Day

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, The 6th Day follows Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Adam Gibson as his life is flipped upside down after he arrives home one day and finds a clone of himself with his family. It’s an intriguing premise that is, for the most part, employed to tedious and uninvolving effect by Spottiswoode, as the filmmaker, armed with Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley’s screenplay, delivers a sluggish thriller that contains few elements designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by Pierre Mignot’s low-rent cinematography and a tedious midsection devoted mostly to Adam’s investigation into his precarious situation. (The former is especially problematic given that the often unpleasant visuals drain all the energy and excitement out of the movie’s various action interludes.) And although Spottiswoode has elicited strong work from Schwarzenegger and an impressive roster of periphery performers, which includes Tony Goldwyn and Robert Duvall, The 6th Day builds towards a hopelessly underwhelming and palpably padded-out third act that ensures it ends on as unmemorable a note as one could envision – with the deeply unsatisfying conclusion ultimately indicative of the picture’s misguided, misbegotten sensibilities.

*1/2 out of ****