November 18, 2000 -- Cloning, like that of many other controversial scientific subjects, has never gotten thoughtful treatment by Hollywood, until now. Who would have thought there would be serious treatment of such a topic in an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie? Get ready for "The Sixth Day."

In this film Schwarzenegger plays Adam Gibson, a man who is cloned in a world where human cloning is illegal. It turns out that in a world where cloning is outlawed only outlaws will have clones. The movie makes the argument that by driving cloning underground it becomes an even more dangerous weapon in the hands of ruthless, powerful men. Gibson discovers he has been cloned and becomes a target because he can reveal the illegal cloning operation to the world.

Drucker (Tony Goldwyn of "Kiss the Girls") heads up Replacement Technologies, the cloning outfit. One of the company's main products is to clone pets, replacement organs and tissues for surgical transplants, endangered species, and to clone animals for food. Dr. Graham Weir (Robert Duvall of "A Civil Action") is the company's lead scientist. Gibson is targeted for murder to protect Drucker and his company.

The science behind this cloning technology is highly suspect. In the movie, entire human minds are downloaded in a matter of seconds and bodies and brains are replicated to perfection in a matter of two hours. That kind of rapid cloning is absurdly fast without enormous advances in science and technology. Those kinds of advances would take more than the handful of years suggested in the movie. How about body tone? Gibson is cloned with all of his muscles. He wasn't born with those muscles. It took years of weight lifting to attain them. A clone would have to work just as long and just as hard to get the same hard body.

Gibson is on the run from Replacement Technology agents through most of the film, but naturally, the bad guys can't shoot straight and they are not too smart. Instead of regular guns, everybody uses laser pistols. There are also some very cool helicopters that convert into fixed-wing jets. There is even a car chase (one bad guy actually says "Oh Boy! A car chase!") involving a vintage Cadillac. There are also plenty of fist fights and explosions interspersed with Arnold's usual pun-loaded dead-pan comic comments. There are comic references to Arnold's famous "I'll be back" line.

The mixture of humor and mayhem is a Schwarzenegger trademark, but it is a bit sick, even if cloning does make death only temporary in some cases. The stunt work is very good in this film, as are the special effects. The acting is not great and Duvall seems totally out of place as a throwaway character in the film. The very busy Michael Rapaport of "Small Time Crooks" does his usual fine job as Hank. Sarah Wynter is also memorable as the punk company assassin Talia.

The common Hollywood take on cloning is: "cloning bad!" This movie has a more thoughtful approach. While we have the extremists who go around killing any clone as an abomination, there is also the view that a clone is no different than anybody, or anything else. A senator whose son is dying of cancer has to make the decision whether or not to have his son cloned, with all of the memories and characteristics of his son, except for the genetic defect that killed him. There are lots of people who want to make the decision for the senator and probably fewer that would leave that decision to the family.

In the end, Drucker, who has the power to clone, uses that power for his own purposes, to affect political change and to give himself a kind of immortality. The cloning technology could also give him the power to control the world since he can "replace" key world figures with people he can control. The Pandora's box that is cloning is all too apparent. The movie also makes it clear that this technology is no more easy to control than the atomic bomb. The movie makes a strong argument for the case that a policy of simply outlawing cloning may cause more problems than it solves. That is a pretty open-minded approach for a Hollywood movie. The movie even touches on the subject of whether or not there is life after death. That is heavy stuff for an action movie. This film rates a B.

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