Impostor

The film concerns a weapon engineer (Gary Sinese) and his wife (Madeleine Stowe) in the future world , as it takes place in 2079 . Then he's framed to be a traitor and serve to Centauri aliens by means of an explosive in his body . He flees and being helped by a young (Meki Phifer) of the slums . They'll take on a clever security agent (Vincent D'Onofrio) until an unexpected and surprising conclusion .

From start to finish the twisted intrigue , thrills and action-packed are unstoppable . Runtime is adequate , it's fast-moving and is neither tiring , nor dull , but bemusing . In the motion picture there are pursuits , emotion , thriller, shootouts and being interesting enough. The final confrontation between the starring and the contenders is very thrilling and really stimulating.

The storyline from original novel by Philip K. Dick , author of great novels and being well adapted the following ones : ¨Blade Runner¨ , ¨Screamers¨ and ¨Total recall¨, among others . The film plot is pretty twisted and the ending has an extraordinary surprise . The picture takes parts here and there of other films , as in the opening scene of the film , footage of some soldiers is taken from the 1997 film Starship Troopers¨ Paul Verhoven , including some security forces who wear similar helmets ; and footage of a volcano and craters , with other explosions is taken from the film ¨Armageddon¨ . State-of-art Special effects , FX , are extraordinaries , they are made by the powerful enterprise ¨Industrial Light Magic¨ , courtesy of George Lucas Corporation . Interpretation by Gary Sinese is riveting , Madeleine Stowe is enjoyable and enticing . Vincent D'Onofrio is outstanding as his acting in ¨Full metal jacket¨.

The flick will appeal science fiction buffs and action fans. The movie didn't obtain success and failed at the box office in spite of the big budget. Rating: 6,5/10 . Well catching.

I was surprised to see that IMDB users had rated this movie as low as they did. This movie really exemplifies the paranoia that is typical of the works of Philip K. Dick much better than the more expensive and more widely-seen "Minority Report". As much as that movie had going for it (great visuals and action, leavened by the right amount of humor), it let the viewer off the hook at the end by resolving the story with a tidy, happy, feel-good ending. "Impostor" is a much lower budget film and very grim but remains true to its Phildickian origin throughout, with the plot unfolding layer by layer until the end, which is both shocking and inevitable. It's the kind of stuff great "Twilight Zone" episodes were made of.

Impostor is a Sci-Fi movie mixed with some elements of action & mystery. This was better than I thought it would be. I even put off watching it for awhile because I did not have very high hopes for it, but it turned out pretty decent.

Gary Sinise plays Spencer Olham, a doctor along with his wife, Maya, played by Madeleine Stowe. Spencer wakes up and goes to work the next morning to find that he is a wanted man. It appears that the military and the U.S. Defense department think that he is actually a cyborg with a bomb placed in it's heart, with a mission to kill the Chancellor! Pretty far out stuff. The visuals explaining this were pretty cool, too.

Spencer manages to escape but always has the military hot on his trail. This is where the mystery comes in. The viewer is forced to wonder whether or not Spencer is actually himself, or the cyborg programmed to be Spencer. The movie does an excellent job of placing doubt in the minds of those watching, no matter which way they are leaning. If they think Spencer is really himself, it still makes you wonder. Major Hathaway, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, claims that the cyborg is merely programmed to act human, as if it really wants to live.

The special effects here are pretty good as well. At the beginning, I thought we would have another Starship Troopers (visually) on our hands. Since the story takes place in the year 2079, it would not be a good science fiction without the cool household gadgets and such. We see plenty of that here, especially in the beginning. Parts of the movie reminded me of I, Robot, Demolition Man and at times, even Star Wars. This comes recommended for science fiction fans.

I watched the feature length "director's cut", then viewed the 37 minute short version on the dvd. The short film is much better! It's more faithful to the PKD story and captures the theme of identity and illusion vs reality more concisely. It's essentially the beginning and ending of the feature w/additional scenes that flesh out the characters. The short makes Olham a little more contradictory - he tells his wife that his project is a good thing, then he questions what he's doing with his friend at the Project. What's missing is the interminable chase that's been done better in innumerable films (see The Running Man for example). Vincent D'Onofrio is a particularly good villain who's not really a villain (or is he?)......................

This movie has a low rating for a lot of very good reasons. The main user comment on the IMDb home page (at least as of now as I write this, John DeSando's) spells them out well. It's a failure.

But--there's a real gem here. What happened was, they set out to make a short, the studio liked it for good reason, had the film makers expand it to a feature-length film, and the end product was the dog of film that failed with critics and audiences and goes down in history as a big collection of mistakes.

But if you rent the DVD, the original short is on there. It's well worth renting just for that. It's riveting, tense and provocative. Really ALL the problems users such as John DeSando rightfully point out (quoting him "a plot twist you can see all the way from Mars....The plot holes are as many as dot our own moon....") are in the parts of the feature-length version that are added.

Rent the DVD. Go right to the short. Skip the long version. Too bad the stupid studio had to ruin something good. (Shocking, I know--a movie studio took something good and tried to milk it for more and ended up spoiling it. Hard to believe, but true.)