Extras: Featurette: "The Future is Coming", On The 6th Day,
Storyboard comparisons, RePet - Infomercial and TV Spot, Animatics,
Filmographies, Theatrical Trailers, Isolated musical score with commentary
by composer Trevor Rabin
Director:
Roger Spottiswoode
(Air America, The 6th Day, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, Tomorrow Never Dies, Turner and Hooch)
Producers:
Jon Davison, Mike Medavoy and Arnold Schwarzenegger
Screenplay:
Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley
Original Score :
Trevor Rabin
Cast :
Adam Gibson: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Hank Morgan: Michael Rapaport
Michael Drucker: Tony Goldwyn
Robert Marshall: Michael Rooker
Talia Elsworth: Sarah Wynter
Natalie Gibson: Wendy Crewson
Wiley: Rodney Rowland
Vincent: Terry Crews
Dr. Griffin Weir: Robert Duvall
Katherine Weir: Wanda Cannon
Virtual Girlfriend: Jennifer Gareis
Johnny Phoenix: Steve Bacic
On the 6th day,
it's stated that God created man in his own image. It's just that each of us
were only meant to be pieced together once and after you've had your prescribed
measure of life, you shuffle off your mortal coil and someone else gets your
soul. Not so here as cloning is the order of the day in this film set
"in the near future" and Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) has perfected
the technique of cloning pets and animals
such that if the family dog dies under the wheel of a car, a sample of their
DNA is all that's required to have Rover bouncing about as per normal,
for which they'll have no recollection of ever being brought back to life
and will know all the same tricks they've been taught.
Of course, new technology always has its sceptics and none more so than
birthday boy Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger), owner of a firm of
choppers that charter about the businessmen that hire them, which, as bad
luck would have it, include aforementioned baddie Drucker. You know they're
bad because it's not long before Gibson's colleague and best friend
Hank Morgan (Michael Rapaport) is bumped off.
Or is he? We see him get killed, but later on he's back in his apartment
being entertained by his virtual girlfriend (Jennifer Gareis) where
Adam returns because he's in a foul mood, with good cause - Adam's been
cloned. Yes, after being told that it's just not possible with humans yet,
not to mention the fact that it was declared illegal, why are there now
two Arnie's running about?
Adam must put a stop to it, but this is where the film begins to fall down.
Although starting with an interesting premise and Arnie putting in enough
work to make his character believable, he must still take part of the rap
as co-producer as it descends into generic action fare with plenty of
"seen it all before" moments and cliched one-liners.
The man who was Henry, the serial killer, Michael Rooker, is
Robert Marshall, one of Drucker's right-hand men who tries to stop Adam
from finding out the truth and under him comes Talia (Sarah Wynter)
and Wiley (Rodney Rowland).
Robert Duvall gets precious little to do as Dr. Griffin Weir,
who we learn was the genius in getting the formula right for cloning humans,
but his practices go unrewarded by Drucker who is attempting to cash in on
the cloning boom by making his clients come back for more and sooner by
introducing defective genes on purpose, such as liver cancer and cystic
fibrosis.
There was no reason for this film to last two hours plus. With some script
rewrites and shortening of unnecessary scenes it could have been cut down by
20-30 minutes and a bit more thought could have helped the film to fulfil
its original premise, rather than give us double vision by thinking than
making us think we've got another Total Recall here.
Finally, although the BBFC's website shows no cuts, I was wondering if a
strong language substitute had been made by the studio prior to submitting
the film to them, since at once point Arnie tells Drucker to go fuck himself.
Later on, after something happens that I won't reveal, Arnie says, "See,
I told you to go screw yourself". Eh? People in the real world wouldn't
change tack like that, so why are they doing that here?
The picture is a flawless anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, with bright
colours excelling for scenes involving special FX such as the choppers flying
over the mountains, hologram street 'signs' and the cloning facility. Artifacts
are nowhere to be seen.
The average bitrate is 5.2Mb/s, briefly peaking above 8Mb/s.
This DVD contains the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack in both English and
Hungarian. Despite the film being a bit of a duffer, when sound FX are required
they certainly go the distance expected. It's a shame there's no DTS soundtrack
included but then the Region 1 DVD is similarly-afflicted.
Columbia have done us proud with this release and if you're a big fan of the
film, the supplemental material will keep you entertained for some time.
First on the extras menu is an Isolated musical score with commentary
by composer Trevor Rabin. Then comes a 15-minute featurette, "The Future
is Coming", a standard affair of film clips and interview soundbites with
film clips cropped to 16:9. On the 6th Day is a look at
how nine of the special effects sequences were created including the Virtual
Girlfriend and 'Detonation', with each mini-featurette lasting a few minutes
apiece.
Three Storyboard comparisons - Car Chase, Whisper-Craft Crash and
Cloning Tanks - are included, as are Animatics or "moving storyboards"
for the Snowy Mountain flight scene and the final Rooftop scene. The RePet
Infomercial (2½) and TV Spot (30 seconds) can also be found
here.
Finally there are Filmographies for the director and cast members
Arnie, Duvall, Goldwyn and Rapaport, plus Theatrical Trailers
for The 6th Day (2 mins, Dolby Digitat 5.1, non-anamorphic 16:9),
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (5 mins, non-anamorphic 2.35:1)
and Vertical Limit (2 mins, anamorphic 16:9).
As this is a Columbia DVD we have the usual 28 chapters and subtitles in
16 languages :
English, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hindi, Hebrew,
Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Greek and Arabic.
The main menu combines a short looped piece of the score with some subtle
animation but it's not overly impressive.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
