Impostor (Director's Cut)
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Movie Reviews of Impostor (Director's Cut)
Movie Review: Never dull, but never a thrill ride, either.
Summary: 3 Stars
Impostor was the first of 2002's futuristic thrillers (the other two being Minority Report and Equilibrium) and it's also easily the weakest, which is no surprise when you consider this is essentially nothing more than a blown-up short film. Not surprisingly, the critics were harsh on this one, and while many of the complaints are valid, Impostor is still a bit better than its reputation.Impostor is set sometime in the future, a time where humans are at war with a powerful alien race. Gary Sinise stars as Spence Olham, a dedicated husband (wife played by the lovely Madeleine Stowe) and scientist who has crafted the ultimate superweapon to battle the aliens, but upon its completion, is accused of being a synthetically created alien cyborg with a bomb in his chest that's set to go off when he reaches his prime target. Now on the run, Olham struggles to prove his innocence before it's too late.
Impostor's concept, that of a seemingly normal man accused of being a replicant, is a fascinating one, but it's unfortunately drowned by director Gary Fleder's obsession with shaky camera movements and quick cuts. The screenplay can also take partial blame for the lack of genuine theme, since it spends more time placing Olham on the run that exploring the possibilities of his predicament (be it from an action or thematic standpoint). The question of identity and what it means to be human is never fully addressed and only touched upon briefly.
Given the back story behind the film's production, it's not surprising to see the film struggle for more plot around the half-hour mark. It's basically just one long chase, and for a supporting cast, we're introduced to an underground homeless group fighting for survival in the ruins outside the cities (the similarities to Johnny Mneumonic in this respect are bothersome). Compelling, this material is not.
But heavily flawed as the film is, the cast is solid, with Sinise delivering yet again another terrific performance. If there's any reason to care about Olham's situation, it's entirely because of Sinise. Decent support from the likes of Vincent D'onofrio, Madeleine Stowe, and Mekhi Phifer (looking like a young Keith David, might I add) keep things afloat and just interesting enough to hold my attention.
With a relatively modest budget (40M), there are some rather convincing special effects (barring the opening sequence, which actually borrows footage from Armageddon and Starship Troopers), as well as some genuinely awe-inspiring cityscapes. Fleder's quick-cuts keep Impostor from attaining the first-rate thrills it aspires for, but the film's fast pace ensures it's never dull and there are even a few exciting action sequences (most notably the hospital fight/chase). But best of all is the climactic plot twist, a no-holds barred surprise that boosts the film up a notch, even if it's resolved in somewhat head-scratching fashion. As a whole, the movie is middling, but there are enough inspired moments to make for a decent timewaster.
** 1/2 out of *****
Movie Review: Excellent ending redeems mediocre film
Summary: 3 Stars
To be honest, this wasn't that great a movie. The set-up was very original, though; during a long-standing war, enemy aliens devise human replicants for use as weapons. These replicants kill human beings and adopt their likeness, knowledge, and memories. The narrative hook is that these "impostors" genuinely believe they are human, so when Dr Olham (Gary Sinise) is accused of being such a replicant, neither he nor the audience knows whether or not it is really true.
It's a great introduction, but the film quickly descends into a fairly predictable lone-hero-on-the-run scenario that we've seen in sci-fi many times before. You know the story: through a combination of extraordinary good fortune and coincidence, the hero is able to outrun and outsmart a whole army of ruthless law enforcers with their futuristic weaponry.....all while attempting to prove his innocence and contact his loved ones. In fact, the bulk of the film is basically one long chase scene. This is based on a short story by sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick, and I read somewhere that this was originally designed as a short film instead of a full-length movie. Perhaps it might have been better to stick with the original idea, because the padding certainly shows in the second act here.
While I really liked Vincent D'Onofrio (a criminally under-rated character actor) as the antagonist Hathaway, I felt Madeline Stowe was largely wasted as Olham's wife, and thought Gary Sinise was unsuited to the lead role. It's not that Sinise gave a bad performance, I just didn't find him that convincing as either a brilliant scientist or desperate man on the run. There are a couple of weaknesses in the plot development as well; Hathaway mentions that the woods have been searched for the dead body....but they didn't stumble across the spaceship that Olham and his wife found inside two minutes? And if you can fool the high-tech face recognition security with only a pair of sunglasses, it kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?
So by about the halfway mark, I was pretty bored with this, and thought I knew exactly how it would play out. But I was wrong. `Impostor' is saved by a very clever and genuinely unexpected ending. Such a twist was even more of a shock since the bulk of the movie had been so predictable. Like all good twist endings, it cast some doubt on what you've seen before, giving several earlier scenes added weight and meaning. I was really impressed that they went with something like this rather than the big action shootout or contrived ending I was expecting.
It's not quite enough to make this a really "good" film, but it does redeem what until that point had been fairly ordinary. With a stronger male lead and a tighter script, this could have been a real sci-fi classic that did justice to Dick's work. As it stands, `Impostor' is an okay film whose highly original ending makes it seem a bit better than it actually is.
Movie Review: Good idea, but there are problems
Summary: 3 Stars
I like this movie better than I probably should, just because it's one of the more faithful screen adaptations of a Philip K. Dick story. (It's also -- and not very importantly -- the first to retain the _name_ of the story on which it's based; _Blade Runner, _Total Recall_, and _Screamers_ didn't. _Minority Report_ and _Paycheck_ are more recent -- and even _Minority Report_ dropped the original title's initial 'the'.)I also like it because it's got Gary Sinise in it. He's one of those reliable actors (like Ed Harris) who just makes any role watchable and interesting. There's also Madeleine Stowe, and the wonderfully frenetic Vincent D'Onofrio.
But it's got troubles.
There are lots of little ones: overuse of slo-mo, hard-to-follow exposition, distracting camera work. But these are just minor annoyances.
There's really one big problem: there's about twenty minutes of plot in a ninety-minute movie. The middle third of the film consists of one big long (and highly unlikely) chase scene that ultimately takes us exactly nowhere in terms of the storyline. (Sure, it shows us some of the sociopolitical backdrop -- like the poor people left outside the domes the gubmint built to protect the rich folks from the Centaurian invasion. But it doesn't move the _story_ along.)
In a way, that's _because_ the film tries not to mess too much with the short story on which it's based (although it does change some things, of course). That'd be okay for a half-hour TV show, but it's not a great idea for a feature-length motion picture.
It's one thing to turn _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_ into a movie; that's a full-length novel. But (as the other Dick screen adaptations illustrate) there just isn't any effective way to translate a Dick short story to the screen without expanding the storyline a heckuva lot more than this film does. The _ineffective_ way -- and the way unfortunately adopted by this film -- is to add a bunch of filler and s-t-r-e-t-c-h the thing out.
To its credit, though, _Impostor_ is very effective in posing one of Dick's trademark issues -- namely, whether genetic 'replicants' might not be _more_ human than human beings. It also gives a little screen time (but not enough) to the usual Dickian questions about the nature of personal identity.
So I'm going to go ahead and like it. But I'm still going to wish there were some more _story_ in it.
Movie Review: The Imposter has an identity crisis
Summary: 3 Stars
The Imposter is a typical PK story. We go eighty years into the future, a time when the earth is under attack by the alien race of Centaurians. All humans now live under large domes to protect themselves from open air attacks. A prominent young scientist is accused of being an andriod carrying a bomb in his rib cage, programmed to go off within a certain proximity to am important public figure. What ensues is a 'fugitive' style race, during which the formerly prominent professor is forced to confront questions about his own reality (am I who I think I am), the suspicions of his own wife, and the desperate situation of a group of people, called the Zonelanders, living outside of the dome and government control.
While all of this is entertaining enough, and indeed the movie provides a couple of excellent surprises in its culmination, there isn't much that is fully developed. While the movie is billed as sci-fi and holds up an expensive background to support that arguement, there isn't much sci-fi about it. We never learn much about the Centaurians, or even get to see them during the movie. There are strong elements of the macabre which really don't belong at all. For example, a medical machine designed to scan the body should normally operate in a methodical pattern. Instead the movie goer is shown a spider like contraption made of steel, which moves in a frighteningly uncontrolled manner. The Zonelanders provide another possiblity for very interesting story development that never comes through. It is hinted at that there is much there, but unfortunately we only get to see them for a few moments as part of the chase.
Overall, The Imposter was fairly entertaining, but certainly could have been better. On the DVD it is stated that the movie was originally concieved as a trilogy, but that during development it was decided to create a single movie. I suspect that this is where things might have gone south. We end up with neither a strong sci-fi flick, sci-horror flick, personal drama, or even fugitive chase. Instead, the movie comes off as a little of this and a little of that. Blah-blah...
Movie Review: A little under-rated
Summary: 3 Stars
Considering how quietly this movie snuck in under the radar (for me anyway), it was hard to have the bar raised too far. That said, since my expectations were put on hold, I really enjoyed this movie.Did it do anything new or inventive? Well ... no ... admittedly, as much as I did enjoy the movie, I'm not deluded into thinking that 'Imposter' is some kind of new land-mark of science-fiction. As mentioned in many reviews before, elements from 'Total Recall,' 'Blade Runner,' 'Minority Report' and the fugitive are borrowed from heavily and there's also a heavy dose of the trade-mark 'perceived reality vs. actual reality' that seems to be the theme of many of Dick's works.
That said though, I don't think anyone dropped the ball either. I thought that the cast had a lot of talent, the performances were all solid, and the script was paced well. The directing was a little muddy. I know the point of having the camera the camera movements being as fluid as they were was to give the audience the same disorienting feeling that the main character was feeling. I think they could have achieved the same feeling without going so far over-board.
When all was said and done, I'm not sure I'd buy the movie; but if you could pick up a used copy, rent it or catch it on cable, you could definitely do it without feeling suckered.