Impostor (2002 film)

Impostor
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gary Fleder
Produced by	Gary Fleder; Marty Katz ; Daniel Lupi ; Gary Sinise
Screenplay by	Caroline Case; Ehren Kruger ; David Twohy
Story by	Scott Rosenberg (adaptation)
Based on	"Impostor"; by Philip K. Dick
Starring	Gary Sinise ; Madeleine Stowe ; Vincent D'Onofrio ; Mekhi Phifer
Music by	Mark Isham
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Edited by	Armen Minasian; Bob Ducsay
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release date	January 4, 2002;
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million [1]
Box office	$8,145,549 [2]

Last updated June 26, 2019

Impostor is a 2002 American science fiction action film based upon the 1953 short story "Impostor" by Philip K. Dick. The film starred Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Mekhi Phifer and was directed by Gary Fleder.^[3]

Science fiction film is a genre that uses rtd-speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception and time travel, along with futuristic elements such as spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. In many cases, tropes derived from written science fiction may be used by filmmakers ignorant of or at best indifferent to the standards of scientific plausibility and plot logic to which written science fiction is traditionally held.

Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist or protagonists are thrust into a series of challenges that typically include violence, extended fighting, physical feats, and frantic chases. Action films tend to feature a resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life-threatening situations, a villain, or a pursuit which usually concludes in victory for the hero. Advancements in CGI have made it cheaper and easier to create action sequences and other visual effects that required the efforts of professional stunt crews in the past. However, reactions to action films containing significant amounts of CGI have been mixed, as films that use computer animations to create unrealistic, highly unbelievable events are often met with criticism. While action has long been a recurring component in films, the "action film" genre began to develop in the 1970s along with the increase of stunts and special effects. Common action scenes in films are generally, but not limited to, car chases, fighting and gunplay or shootouts.

"Impostor" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Astounding SF magazine in June, 1953.

Plot

The film takes place in the year 2079. Forty-five years earlier, Earth was attacked by a hostile and implacable alien civilization from Alpha Centauri. Force shield domes are put in place to protect cities, and a totalitarian global military government is established to effect the war and the survival of humans. The Centaurians have never been physically seen.

Alpha Centauri is the closest star system and closest planetary system to the Solar System at 4.37 light-years (1.34 pc) from the Sun. It is a triple star system, consisting of three stars: α Centauri A, α Centauri B, and α Centauri C.

Totalitarianism political system in which the state holds total authority

Totalitarianism is a political concept of a mode of government that prohibits opposition parties, restricts individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. Political power in totalitarian states has often been held by rule by one leader which employ all-encompassing propaganda campaigns broadcast by state-controlled mass media. Totalitarian regimes are often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, restriction of speech, mass surveillance and widespread use of state terrorism. Historian Robert Conquest describes a "totalitarian" state as one recognizing no limits to its authority in any sphere of public or private life and which extends that authority to whatever length feasible.

World government or global government or cosmocracy is the notion of a common political authority for all of humanity, giving way to a global government and a single state that exercises authority over the entire world. Such a government could come into existence either through violent and compulsory world domination or through peaceful and voluntary supranational union.

The film follows Spencer Olham, a designer of top-secret government weapons. One day while on his way to work, he is arrested by Major Hathaway of the Earth Security Administration (ESA), being identified as a replicant created by the aliens. The ESA intercepted an alien transmission which cryptanalysts decoded as programming Olham's target to be the Chancellor, whom he was scheduled to meet. Such replicants are perfect biological copies of existing humans, complete with transplanted memories, and do not know they are replicants. Each has a powerful "U-bomb" in their chest in the exact design of a human heart, which can only be detected by dissection or a high-tech medical scan, since it only arms itself and detonates when it gets in close proximity to its target. Detection via the special scan works by comparing against a previous scan, if there was one.

Major Hathaway begins interrogating Olham. As Hathaway is about to drill out Olham's chest to find the bomb, Olham breaks loose and escapes, accidentally killing his friend Nelson in the process. With the help of underground stalker Cale, Olham avoids capture and sneaks into the hospital where his wife Maya is an administrator to get the high-tech scan redone and prove he's not a replicant. But the scan is interrupted by security forces before it can deliver the answer.

That evening, after fleeing from the city, Olham and Maya are eventually captured by Hathaway's troops in a forest near an alien crash site, close to the spot where they spent a romantic weekend just a week or so before Olham's arrest. Inside the ship they discover the corpse of the real Maya, and Hathaway shoots and kills the replicant before she can detonate. Hathaway thinks he has killed the true impostor, but as his men move debris away from the Centauri ship, the real Spencer Olham's body is revealed. At that moment, Olham realizes aloud that both Maya and himself really are alien replicants... and the secondary trigger (his awareness of what he truly is) detonates his U-bomb, destroying himself, Hathaway, his troops, and everything else in a wide area in a fiery nuclear explosion.

In the final scene, the news announces that Hathaway and the Olhams were killed in an alien enemy attack, as if the government were covering up the truth or didn't know what actually happened. Cale wonders if he ever really knew Olham's true identity.

Cast

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

Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, director and musician. He is known for his comedic and dramatic roles in his career. Among other awards, he has won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame and has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Madeleine Marie Stowe is an American actress. She appeared mostly on television before her breakthrough role in the 1987 crime-comedy film Stakeout. She went on to star in the films Revenge (1990), Unlawful Entry (1992), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Blink (1993), Bad Girls (1994), China Moon (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The General's Daughter (1999), and We Were Soldiers (2002). For her role in the 1993 independent film Short Cuts, she won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Vincent Philip D'Onofrio is an American actor, producer, director, and singer.

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.

Isaac Asimov American science-fiction and non-fiction writer

Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer who wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His books have been published in 9 of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). It was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy.

Bryan Jay Singer is an American director, producer and writer of film and television. He is the founder of Bad Hat Harry Productions and has produced or co-produced almost all of the films he has directed.

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.

Scott Rosenberg is an American screenwriter, film producer, and actor.

Mark David Protosevich is an American screenwriter. He wrote the screenplays for the films Poseidon and I Am Legend.

Ehren Kruger is an American screenwriter and film producer. He is best known for writing three of the five installments in the Transformers film series: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, and Age of Extinction.

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". Other filming locations included the Coachella Valley.^[4]

The movie was made on an estimated $40 million budget.^[1]

Reception

Critical response

Impostor received negative reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 22% based on 91 reviews.^[5] Metacritic gives the film a score of 33% based on 26 reviews.^[6]

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."^[7] 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."^[8] 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.^[9]

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."^[10] Robert Koehler of Variety also criticized the film, calling it "a stubbornly unexciting ride into the near future."^[11]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times offered a sardonic view of the movie's "dark view of the future" ("a badly lighted one, that is"), of the editing ("pointlessly hyperkinetic"), and of the "twist" ending ("meant to be clouded with ambiguity, but really it is unequivocally happy because it means the movie is over").^[12]

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.^[13]

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References

1 2 "Impostor (2002) - Financial Information". The-numbers.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
↑ "Impostor". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2010-12-05.
↑ "Impostor". Turner Classic Movies . Atlanta: Turner Broadcasting System (Time Warner). Retrieved October 2, 2016.
↑ Palm Springs Visitors Center. "Coachella Valley Feature Film Production 1920–2011". Filming in Palm Springs. Palm Springs, CA. Archived from the original on October 1, 2012. Retrieved October 1, 2012. Download ^{[ permanent dead link ]} (Downloadable PDF file)
↑ "Imposter (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 2017-08-22.
↑ "Impostor". Metacritic.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
↑ "Review: Impostor". preview.reelviews.net. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
↑ "Mundane 'Impostor' has its moments". Seattlepi.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
↑ "Impostor". TVGuide.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
↑ Keith Phipps (March 29, 2002). "Imposter". The A.V. Club . The Onion.
↑ Robert Koehler (January 2, 2002). "Also Playing: Impostor". Variety .
↑ Scott, A. O. (Jan 4, 2002). "Serious identity crisis: Good guy or robot alien suicide bomber?". The New York Times . p. E33. Retrieved May 10, 2013.
↑ "Imposter (2002)". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2017-08-22.

External links

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[the-numbers-1] 1 2 "Impostor (2002) - Financial Information". The-numbers.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.

[2] "Impostor". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2010-12-05.

[Impostor-3] "Impostor". Turner Classic Movies . Atlanta: Turner Broadcasting System (Time Warner). Retrieved October 2, 2016.

[Filming-4] Palm Springs Visitors Center. "Coachella Valley Feature Film Production 1920–2011". Filming in Palm Springs. Palm Springs, CA. Archived from the original on October 1, 2012. Retrieved October 1, 2012. Download ^{[ permanent dead link ]} (Downloadable PDF file)

[5] "Imposter (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 2017-08-22.

[6] "Impostor". Metacritic.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.

[7] "Review: Impostor". preview.reelviews.net. Retrieved 22 August 2017.

[8] "Mundane 'Impostor' has its moments". Seattlepi.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.

[9] "Impostor". TVGuide.com. Retrieved 22 August 2017.

[10] Keith Phipps (March 29, 2002). "Imposter". The A.V. Club . The Onion.

[11] Robert Koehler (January 2, 2002). "Also Playing: Impostor". Variety .

[12] Scott, A. O. (Jan 4, 2002). "Serious identity crisis: Good guy or robot alien suicide bomber?". The New York Times . p. E33. Retrieved May 10, 2013.

[mojo-13] "Imposter (2002)". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2017-08-22.