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Review: Impostor
Before I get started, it should be pointed out that managing expectations is very important when going to see a movie. If you go into this movie expecting a "Blade Runner" or an "Alien" you probably won't be so happy. If you go into this expecting a "Screamers" or "Pitch Black" however, then you'll probably enjoy the hell out of it.
"Imposter" stars Gary Sinise as an Oppenheimer-like weapons researcher named Spencer Olham. He's working on creating a superweapon to unleash upon an alien menace originating from Alpha Centauri. Frankly, watching the movie, we're getting our asses kicked, with human society devolving into a fascist state huddled under energy domes for protection.
The aliens, however, really aren't the focus of the film, which is neither good nor bad, as they aren't really central to the plot. Sinise's character Olham is picked up by the government as he is suspected of being an alien replicant instead of the real Olham, with the additional feature of a bomb in his chest designed to go off when he meets with the Chancellor of Earth. After being picked up and taken to an ominous interrogation center to be killed, he manages to escape to the dead zone between city-domes, a dystopic scene of poverty and the overlooked. Within the zone, Spencer convinces the streetwise Cale to sneak him back into the city to meet up with his wife, Maya.
I don't want to go much further into the actual plot of the film, as it doesn't really matter that much. It's fairly predictable but enjoyable. The IMDB entry for "Impostor" notes that this was originally one part of a three-part movie that was expanded to fill the full length of this film. There does seem to be a bit of padding going on, like the exploration of Cale's motivation for helping Olham sneak back into the city where Olham's wife Maya (played by Madeline Stowe) works. In the end you don't mind because the padding is well done and entertaining.
The effects are enjoyable in a "look it's a cool city with ships flying around all over it" way and the cast is much stronger than you'd expect in this kind of movie, but not too much. I did feel that Vincent D'Onofrio was probably not very well cast in his role as Major Hathaway. Mr. D'Onofrio is the kind of actor that when he has the right role really shines (his work on Law and Order, for instance). But still, even ill-placed, he's enjoyable to watch.
To wrap up, "Impostor" is a decent flick worth your $5.75 matinee price while elongating your lunch hour and definitely worth taking the time to watch on cable, although the effects would not be as enjoyable.
Don't knock pitch black, that's really up there as far as SCI FI goes. Like Supernova and Event Horizon.
It's a sad world indeed if we expect everything to be high caliber, like LOTR and Star Wars. (hah!)
As for imposter, I swear I saw a trailer for this on some VHS movie I rented for $0.99 two years ago.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I distinctly remember seeing a trailer for it two years ago and thinking "Wow, that looks good." About a year later I went to the video store, but I could not find Imposter (little did I know that the film never made it to the theater).
The next trailer I saw was just last month, and it said the movie was "Coming Christmas Day".
Christmas Day came and past, and I never saw any theaters with it. Then I saw the trailer on Tuesday that said it was "Coming January 4th".
Well, after pushing back the release date 3 times it is good to see they finally got it in theaters. I can't wait to watch it.
Not to be pedantic here...but aren't most films enjoyable, as long as you don't expect much from it?
The Curse, and Python notwithstanding, obviously.
I've always liked Sinise and he was a producer for this, but it just doesn't compare to Blade Runner or Total Recall.
That being said I liked the ending. It twisted more than normal and it wasn't the usual ending. It was padded and no secondary characters were developed. I did enjoy Sinise's performance as well as D'Onofrio's. Sinise was unrelenting in his desparation and D'Onofrio was unforgiving in his tracking.
Unfortunately, I just saw Beautiful Mind last night and it just blew me away. As a result I can't say this was a good movie.
I hafta say that I just finished watching Strange Brew and I enjoyed just as much if not more. It's held up well.:)
IMHO, as per
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Every review except this one seems to agree with me (unfortunately, I didn't read them before going to see it.) I don't expect every sci-fi movie I see to have mind-blowing computer effects, but this movie reeks of the mid-80s. Perhaps it would have been better recieved by the critics if it had been released now. As it is, it looks rather dated and I found the plot being pushed to the back in favor of explosions and hollywood flash. In short, if you HAVE to see this movie, take some funny friends, so at least you can be entertained by their MST3K like comments. Otherwise, go see LOTR again.
Okay, I'm done now.
Carousel is a lie!
I just saw the trailer for Minority Report which looks like a better bet for Philip K Dick fans, despite the presence of both Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. Is it just coincidence that both of these are coming out at the same time?
"Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
Hmmm.... Maybe it would be better if slashdot had a movie review policy that specified that movie reviews must be written in the most fluent language of the reviewer - like Perl or C++ instead of english.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
While watching the movie chrisd got his ass kicked with a society that is fascist and hudled under domes. Exactly how do you assault someone with a society? See Horton Hears a Who or Men in Black for details.
class Impostor extends Thread implements Flim
{
public static final void main(String argv, int argc)
{
new Impostor();
}
Imposter(){
super();
while(playing) sleep();
};
}
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Seen this movie and it was average. I didn't hate the movie but I didn't like it much either.
:).
:). I mean why strap him into one chair.. wake him up, then place him over into a second device. Silly.
Visual FX wise, I was disapointed with the recycled starship troopers FEDNET footage during the begining half of the movie and that most of the government troopers were using starship troopers uniforms. LAMEO... I guess they had to cut corners on the budget seeing its released under the Dimension Films banner instead of New Line
The other effects ranged from piss poor to above average.I'm guessing Netter Digital did alot of the space sequences which looks a bit cheesy.
Some of the city shots/buildings looked good.. but the space/airship design and animation was odd except for mayable one or two scenes.
I'm still trying to figure out ILM's contribution to the film.
The editing was poor. The sequence with the implant removal was jaring timing wise. Alot of action sequences were not clear.. as the action was heavy post processed with lots of moving camera work with shots that were often out of focus or where the action was slightly off camera.
And Plot holes...
Well, if the government agents simply just did the "operation" while Olham was sedated there wouldn't be a movie
Also the idea that the government told Olham that they knew the Centauri ship landed in the forest. Why didn't they search the ship?
These guys had technology to allow their troops to see through whole buildings but yet they couldn't find what Mr. And Mrs. Olham found by running through the woods in pitch darkness.
Oh boy.
Oh well it could have been worse.. I guess.
The short story is good but it looked like it didn't provide enough material for a feature.. so basically most of the moive is a chase sequence which really added nothing to the overall story.
But overall I'm glad... good or bad I'm glad theres more sci fi stuff out there. With a bit more work this movie would have been better.
> Every review except this one seems to agree
> with me (unfortunately, I didn't read them
> before going to see it.)
I went to see this movie about three weeks ago with a friend who had advance tickets. It was probably the first movie i had seen in years without knowing ANYTHING about it(i didn't know it was a sci-fi movie until i saw the space ships). I had absolutely no expectations of the movie and was surprised by how much i liked it. A couple of the characters are a bit cliched(okay, all of the characters are a bit cliched), but still, it's a good story. I really liked the way the protagonist had done nothing wrong so you sympathize with him, but still the audience is left totally in the dark as to his status and doesn't know whether or not to secretly root for the bad guys.
i don't really have anything bad to say about this movie.
lysergically yours
Other than a massive airtime buy on SciFi (which, given that 80% of their commericials are for their own shows, probably cost about $1.89) and a few other minor cable channels, real-world promotion of this film has been zilch.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Event Horizon and Supernova are two of the worst movies I've ever seen.
The set was huge, and pretty amazing. They built the entire subway inside two sound stages, along with some sci-fi buildings (the hospital).
Apparently they had distribution problems which prevented its release. We also worked on Evolution, which started filming several months AFTER Impostor finished, but obviously was released a while ago.
Why shouldn't we expect what we pay for to be high-calibre?
This is simply a bad film. If it weren't for the special effects, that incidentally only show up primarily in the beginning of the film, this would be a "B" grade film. All of the running around in the so-called Dead Zone did nothing to further the plot made thin by the obvious padding. This could have been a good short subject if it were limited to the elements essential to the plot. Sadly, Sinise (one of the Producers of the film) saw fit to expand it into a bomb. Don't bother renting it, as it will likely be rendered to tape and DVD quite soon.
Weird, I just got home from seeing this thing. Luckily I got in for free. When I heard about this movie like two years ago I expected a Blade Runner with ten times the quality of special effects and acting on par to BR because you won't want your new movie to suck ass compared to a movie based on a story by the same author. Then this piece of crap came out.
No the special effects aren't cool, I was more impressed watching the Babylon 5 pilot in terms of CG shots. Fancy fly overs of a city to give a sense of scale only work if the city is believable. Now why would a society protecting itself with dome shields build skyscrapers, and fancy ass ones at that? It was sort of sad some effects shots looked good (the medical print outs) while the news broadcasts and interface for the scanner thingie were just sad.
The outdoor shots were sort of cool to watch because I've been to alot of those buildings. A good number of exterior shots were filmed at CS Pomona in or on the CompSci building. The building with the weird looking triangular points is said building, the stairs they first walk up I broke my ankle on. You'll notice this is the same building in Gattaca. Same with the "walls of the city" which you'll notice is the same place Ethan Hawke's character in Gattaca watched rockets launching.
The acting was pretty decent but the screenwriters sure did add alot of stuff from the like four page short story originally written.
*SPOILER*
I guess I missed in the movie where the mention the passphrase for the bomb. I was waiting for somebody to bring it up considering it is a major plot device in the story. Am I the only one who missed it or did anybody else sort of fail to catch the single line in the whole movie making reference to it?
*END SPOILER*
With Gary Sinise I you don't know what to expect. He does such a damn good job in some good movies and then pulls of a stinker like Reindeer Games and the Imposter. Overall I rate it pretty low and I'm glad I didn't pay to see it. Like the original review says, people ecpecting Blade Runner will be disappointed. Maybe next time I'll go see A Beautiful Mind: Romper Stomper 2.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
While I'm too lazy to go look it up, it should also be noted that this story was also adapted to a 1 hour episode of the Outer Limits.
It was thoroughly enjoyable and was extremely well done. Quite frankly, I was rather skeptical about the chances of it making it as a full-on in-theatre movie.
$0.02 (CDN)
I notice that Blade runner was mentioned alongside aliens as reference to "good" Sci Fi. Blade runner was adapted from another P K Dick story "Do androids dream of electric sheep" When I say adapted I mean that Hollywood removed any meaningful content and replaced it with breasts and explosions. Compared to the painfully detailed social commentary and legendary character depth that the book contains, the movie is the worst pile of crap ever to grace the screen.
Radio Free Albemuth would make a great movie, and you can munge stuff from the Valis trilogy to pad with some sense of story.