GET SET FOR A DOUBLE DOSE OF ARNOLD IN 'THE 6TH DAY'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Arnold Schwarzenegger and company spice up the meat-and-potatoes sci-fi actioner ``The 6th Day'' with a pinch of headline paranoia. The film plays on public fears of human cloning, and while that hardly makes this the zeitgeist grabber that, say, ``Dirty Harry'' was in the lawless early '70s or ``Fatal Attraction'' became during the early awareness of AIDS, it gives the usual bash-and-boom a pleasing kick.

That said, the movie fails to have as much fun as it potentially could have had with the concept of two Arnolds running around, both of whom think they're the original article. Directed briskly by Roger Spottiswoode (``Tomorrow Never Dies,'' ``Air America'') in a fragmented, high-tech, voyeuristic style reminiscent of the somewhat more gripping ``Enemy of the State,'' the film is a romping enough experience. But to really blast off, it should have been both creepier and kookier.

It's just clever enough, though. Arnold plays a helicopter pilot, Adam Gibson, who runs extreme skiing jaunts in the near future around the Pacific Northwest. Although he loves some gadgets, like wrist-remote chopper controls, he is also something of a techno-throwback. Adam still prefers his classic muscle car over the currently fashionable battery-operated vehicles, is weirded out by the concept of cloning the dead family dog even if not doing so will break his daughter's heart, thinks his business partner Hank (Michael Rapaport) has an unhealthy relationship with his pliant virtual girlfriend, etc.

And even though he's hardly as radical as the fundamentalists who protest genetic-tech billionaire Michael Drucker's (Tony Goldwyn) animal and plant-cloning operation, Adam soon finds reason to be. One night he comes home to find his wife (Wendy Crewson) nuzzling another man - and it's him. Soon, a squad of assassins (led by Michael Rooker and a striking, blue-haired Sarah Wynter) is chasing Adam. Being, basically, Arnold, he dispatches them in short order. But then they come after him again. And again. And again ...

Well, we know what on earth is going on here, the biblically based title statutes outlawing people cloning be damned.

The fun here isn't so much in the plotting, which is credited to the husband-and-wife writing team of Marianne and Cormac Wibberley, but in the offhand details.

The film is rich in Arnie-centric jokes, such as Adam's fondness for illegal cigars and his quip, while trying to get wife and child away from zap-gunning pursuers, that he doesn't want his daughter exposed to violence. Good futurist gags include a sick running joke about the uses of a severed thumb and a Miranda-rights-from-hell situation, in which the court appoints computer-generated lawyers and psychiatrists who know even less than the know-it-alls of today do.

And in the film's one truly humane dramatization of cloning ethics, Robert Duvall's scientific genius must sort out his feelings about his beloved wife's afterlife-or-death condition.

So it's generally OK, despite the unavoidably anticipated Arnold-vs.- Arnold fizzle. As for that, well, maybe on the 7th day.

``THE 6TH DAY''

(Rated PG-13: violence, language)

The stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Goldwyn, Robert Duvall, Michael Rapaport, Michael Rooker, Sarah Wynter, Wendy Crewson.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Written by Cormac and Marianne Wibberley. Produced by by Mike Medavoy, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jon Davison. Released by Columbia Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, four minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars

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Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger) comes home to find he has been illegally cloned in ``The 6th Day.''