IMPOSTOR

By: P. MACDOUGAL
Date: Friday, January 04, 2002

So what's a high-tech, testosterone-driven, sci-fi action fest like IMPOSTOR doing being released in the wintry month of January, as opposed to during the summer, when all the other hot and heavy genre pickings compete against one another for the box office bucks?

Well, let's just say that IMPOSTOR isn't fooling anyone.

The reason it's been lumped into the post-holiday January wasteland is that it's nothing more than a straight-to-video genre fest in a theatrical release's clothing. Originally intended as one third of a sci-fi anthology film from Dimension Films, IMPOSTOR is all that remains of that defunct project, the other two segments having been discarded and this portion being padded out from its original half-hour running time. And boy, can you feel that padding.

Based on a story by the much-maligned (in terms of film adaptations, anyway) Philip K. Dick, IMPOSTOR is set roughly 80 years from now in a time when the Earth is under constant attack from an unseen alien race. Gary Sinise stars as Spencer Olham, a weapons engineer whodespite the apparent turmoil these aliens can causeseems to be living the good life with his wife Madeleine Stowe (who must be as surprised as us that she still has a semblance of a career).

Things take

a turn for the surreal for Olham when he goes to work one morning only to find himself abducted by a group of government agents led by Vincent D'Onofrio. In a classic Philip K. Dick twist, these agents claim that Olham isn't really Olham anymorethat he's been killed and replaced by an exact duplicate, a replicant of sorts, that is programmed to get as close to the Earth's leader (Lindsay Crouse, in what amounts to as less than a walk-on role) as possible and then detonate the H-Bomb that is embedded in its chest. Needless to say, Olham objects to this ideahe knows who he isand escapes to prove his innocence. Cue the aforementioned padding.

One gets the sense that IMPOSTOR would have worked much better as the short film that it was originally intended to be. The premise is sound, if familiar today, and the Dick themes of identity and paranoia are clearly at the heart of the story. But what would have succeeded as a modern day 22-minute TWILIGHT ZONE episode instead comes across like one of those dreaded hour-long ZONEs. Knowing that the film was expanded from its original form, it's easy to spot the flabby middle section where a whole new subplot of running and hiding and fighting and chasing has been added. But even those who are completely ignorant to IMPOSTOR's origins will still notice that Olham's sudden acquisition of a sidekick (in the person of Mekhi Phifer) a third of the way into the film is strangejust as his jettisoning of the character before the final reel is equally odd.

There's also the matter of the illogic in the script. Example: If the aliens can deliver a replicant with an H-Bomb in it to the planet's surface (bypassing the shields which protect Earth's cities), why don't they simply bombard the areas they can reach with lethal radiation, rather than choosing the somewhat dramatic method of sending a couple of imperfect human replicants to the surface?

IMPOSTOR does have something to offer, particularly for genre fanatics. The opening segments are sort of cool, and the twist ending psyche-out might take some by surprise. But director Gary Flederrecently guilty of the Michael Douglas thriller DON'T SAY A WORDlooks to crib from previous Dick-inspired pictures like BLADE RUNNER and TOTAL RECALL, capturing little of the style or action-muscle of those two films. If you've truly got a hankering for a Philip K. Dick adaptation, best to wait until this summer for Spielberg and Cruise's MINORITY REPORT.

IMPOSTOR

Grade: C

Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release

Rated: PG-13

Stars: Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D'Onofrio, Tony Shalhoub, Mekhi Phifer

Writers: Caroline Case, Ehren Kruger, David Twohy, Scott Rosenberg, from a story by Philip K. Dick

Director: Gary Fleder

Distributor: Dimension Films