Load of rubbish!!

A Disappointing Continuation

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Like all PKD stuff, excellent core idea, but man did they mess it up. What's worse is that it seems like it may have been filmed adequately. The city is very believable, the totalitarian state full of soldiers is a bit of a trope but again feels believable in the way they act and even talk, it sure missed the smartphone era, but got some surveillance right. Gary Sinise is good, Madeleine Stowe is underused, Vincent D'Onofrio chews the scenery a bit, but he's supposed to, Tony Shalhoub and Mekhi Phifer were excellent, and almost against type for them, too bad they were in it so little. But then there's the editing. It's very, very 2001. Motion blur, noises, too many cuts to add tension badly, etc. Often feels, generally, like a lot of the film has been excised in favor of exciting chase stuff, when it's a paranoid drama. When they let it be that way, it works. The plaza "chase" scene is rather good, even the supporting characters like the frustrated soldiers who then stop being faceless drones. And the beginning. Oh! The intro! Minutes of voiceover explaining everything. Which is then explained a bit more with text. And all of it is explained, with in-character narration and flashbacks within 30 minutes! This is such a sign of studio interference. I can just see there's an awesome rough cut that freaked out some studio execs, and they brought in their own guy and re-edited it to death.

The best, most thoughtful, most fun part of this effort from Gary Fleder based on a 1953 Philip Dick novel is that technology might become so advanced (or alien) that one might not even know one's identity as friend or enemy. And if one doesn't even know, then what kind of enemy is that? Rather sadly, in a way, this point is made very strongly in a quite early (and quite memorable) scene in "Impostor", and we don't really recapture those heady heights until the last 5 minutes. It's no secret (or even spoiler) that much of the film is devoted to having us wonder if our hero is ... or isn't. Simultaneously, we've got a routine-ish "fugitive on the run" movie, if one made reasonably compelling by the solid performance of Gary Sinese as Spencer Olham, as well as certain futuristic touches giving us the odd insight into the world in 2079. But since this is all taking place in a (very) long-distance (and pretty technologically implausible) war between Earth and Alpha Centauri that has necessitated far-reaching changes on our home planet, this reviewer at least felt regularly distracted by a yearning to home in more on that kind of topic (nicely rendered in "Starship Troopers"), as opposed to wondering whether Olham is going to manage to get through this door, slip down that dark and gloomy tunnel (much of this film is in over-subdued lighting), or find some other way to evade the next detector device. Maybe the small story illustrates the bigger picture, but here we have only hints of the latter, which we'd certainly like more of. What is quite interesting is interplay between Sinese's character and that of Cale (played by Mekhi Phifer), though the status of his group of outlaws goes somewhat unexplained. After all, Earth has a deadly alien enemy, so a desire on the part of some to rebel against a rather dictatorial regime can't help but look a bit of a finicky sideshow. A pretty good and nuanced performance is also turned in by Vincent D'Onofrio as Hathaway.Seasoned sci fi fans keen on seeing every film in the genre should not miss it (and Dick is Dick for all that - though the short story is still out there, on paper). Nor should Sinese aficionados pass up the chance (he also produced). Others may wonder if their time might not be better spent, though admittedly this is a short piece at less than 90 minutes before the credits roll.

Really good science fiction. I thought I knew exactly where this was going and was getting bored as it moved toward the seemingly inevitable conclusion, but then it wound up throwing me at the very end. The special effects were kind of cheesy for this day and age, and, unless you are Elon Musk, it is more than a little ridiculous to think that science and technology will advance this far in mere 60 more years; however, the tech stuff that will never actually happen is not really a problem, because these fictions were only plot devices so that the story could explore deeper ideas about existence and identity. For me personally, the ending came out of left field, and I found it downright unsettling. If you let your mind wander, you're left with some things to think about after the show is over. Good stuff.

It's 2079 the world has been at war with an alien race from Alpha Centauri for 45 years. A secret government weapons designer Spencer Olham is forced to go on the run when he accused of being a replicant assassin created by the aliens to kill the Chancellor.Impostor is an overlooked adequate science fiction based on a story by Philip K. Dick. Due to the source material it's reminiscent of Total Recall, Blade Runner, Minority Report to name a few. Coincidently Stephen King's novel the Running Man shares a lot of similarities.Directed adequately by Gary Fleder and despite an abundance of unnecessary slow motion shots, the special effects, futuristic sets and gritty locations are well realised and executed. In addition, it has a fitting score, the camera work was ahead of its time using a style that has become common place since.Wisely Imposter doesn't feature the Alien race and the action follows Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise) on his search through the domed protected city and outskirts to find out the truth while being tracked down by Major Hathaway excellently played by Vincent D'Onofrio. There's a cast of familiar faces including Gary Dourdan, Tony Shalhoub, Shane Brolly and Madeleine Stowe who is at her peak here as Maya Olham.It's a drawn-out mystery, that said it has some nice ideas, touches, a few twists and a satisfying downbeat conclusion. Overall, an entertaining science fiction that oozes atmosphere.