Impostor (film)

Impostor
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Gary Fleder
Produced by	Michael Phillips
Written by	Philip K. Dick (short story) Scott Rosenberg (adaptation)
Screenplay by	Caroline Case Ehren Kruger David Twohy
Starring	Gary Sinise Madeleine Stowe Vincent D'Onofrio
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Editing by	Bob Ducsay Armen Minasian
Studio	Miramax Films
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release date(s)	January 4, 2002 (2002-01-04)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million
Box office	$8,145,549

Impostor is a 2002 American science fiction film based upon a short story of the same name, written by Philip K. Dick in 1953.

Plot

The movie takes place in the year 2079. Forty-five years earlier, Earth was attacked by a hostile alien civilization from Alpha Centauri. A totalitarian global military government is established shortly thereafter to wage the war effort.

The film follows Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise)--a top-secret government weapons designer who is arrested by the government on suspicion of being a replicant created by the hostile aliens. The replicants are perfect biological copies of existing humans complete with transplanted authentic memories and thus do not realize they are replicants. Each carries within its chest a small organic nuclear bomb. The government has intercepted an alien transmission which stated that Olham's replicant was to assassinate the Chancellor of Earth when he came into contact with her.

Olham manages to escape the government forces who captured him just before they were going to remove and examine his heart for evidence of a bomb. He is eventually recaptured in a forest near an alien crash site. Inside the ship, the corpse of the real Olham is discovered. At that moment, the detonation sequence of the replicant-Olham engages and the alien plan to assassinate the Chancellor fails.

Cast

• Gary Sinise as Spencer Olham
• Madeleine Stowe as Maya Olham
• Vincent D'Onofrio as Hathaway
• Tony Shalhoub as Nelson Gittes
• Tim Guinee as Dr. Carone
• Mekhi Phifer as Cale
• Gary Dourdan as Captain Burke
• Lindsay Crouse as Chancellor
• Elizabeth Pena as Midwife
• Shane Brolly as Lt. Burrows
• Golden Brooks as Cale's Sister
• Ted King (actor) as RMR Operator
• Rachel Luttrell as Scan Room Nurse

Production

The film adaptation was originally planned to be one segment of a three-part science fiction anthology film titled Light Years, but was the only segment filmed before the project fell apart. The other shorts were to be adaptations of Isaac Asimov's story "The Last Question" by Bryan Singer and Donald A. Wollheim's story "Mimic" by Matthew Robbins. "Mimic" had already been adapted into a film of the same name, but with a different script.

The short was originally written by Scott Rosenberg, with revisions by Mark Protosevich and Caroline Case. When it was decided to expand the short into a feature-length film, additional scenes were written by Richard Jeffries, Ehren Kruger, and David Twohy.

Burn areas in Running Springs, California, were used to create the space craft crash site. Sets were constructed in Angeles National Forest and in numerous areas around Los Angeles. Most of the interiors were built on stage in Manhattan Beach, including a two-story hospital and 3-story pharmacy, and a commuter transport station with articulated commuter "bugs".

The movie was made on an estimated $40 million budget.

Reception

Critical response

Impostor received poor to average and few positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 21% based on 91 reviews. Metacritic gives the film a score of 33% based on 26 reviews.

James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film two and a half stars (out of four), saying "there are a few moderately diverting subplots and the storyline eventually gets somewhere," but added that "Impostor wears out its welcome by the half-hour mark, and doesn't do anything to stir things up until the climax. You could spend the entire midsection of this movie in the bathroom and not miss much." William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave the film a mildly positive review, praising lead actor Gary Sinise's ability to "hold the film together and provide a strong, sympathetic human focus. The movie's atmosphere has a very definite Blade Runner feel." Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide gave the film three stars out of four, saying it packed "a real emotional wallop," but suggested that it would have worked better as the 40-minute short film it was originally intended to be.

Keith Phipps of The Onion's A.V. Club gave the film a negative review, saying that "it essentially uses the setup of [the story] as a bookend to one long, dull chase scene." Robert Koehler of Variety also criticized the film, calling it "a stubbornly unexciting ride into the near future."

Box office

The film earned a little over $6 million at the box office in the United States and Canada, with the estimated worldwide of over $8 million, thus making it a box office failure.

External links

• Impostor at the Internet Movie Database
• Impostor at Rotten Tomatoes
• Impostor at Metacritic
• Impostor at Box Office Mojo