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OK I'm going to say it and get it out of the way. The real bomb is this movie. Ok, I'm done. The makers of this film
want you to know that Impostor came from the same mind that brought us movies like Total Recall and Blade Runner (Phillip
K. Dick, wrote the stories all three of these films were based on). It’s never a good idea to mention better movies
on the poster for your crappy movie. This movie opens with footage from other godawful sci-fi films (Armageddon, Starship
Troopers) and most of the props are lifted from Starship Troopers, so thanks for establishing that you suck from the get go,
movie.
Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise, who shares a producer credit on this film, so shed no tears for him) is a weapons designer
in a futuristic world at war with Alpha Centauri. The movie gets off to a good start (i.e. sex and shower scenes) and as the
opening credits roll you notice that every actor ever appears in this film. It really gave me a bit of hope because they are
all actual actors, you know the kind that do believable emoting and there are so many of them this movie was starting to seem
like a safe bet in spite of the opening narration crap. Did I mention the movie is pretty ugly, that's what I noticed next,
and dark. Just like Rollerball come to think of it. The costumes are good, but the sets all feel a bit too small,
which could be to impose a claustrophobic Orwellian vibe but just comes off feeling cheap.
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| Quick shoot the movie! It's a bomb! It'll ruin our careers! |
Anyway Spence is married to Maya (Madeline Stowe, yawn) and they are sooo in looove! I got pretty excited when we
meet Spence's buddy, uh, I can't remember his name, so let's call him Buddy Gonnabiteit played by Tony Shalhoub who is yet
another honest to goodness actor, and the whole affair seems like it's going to go in an interesting direction. Then all hell
breaks loose when government agent, uh, oh I forgot his name too, he's played by Vincent D'Onofrio and he's clearly one of
those cops on the edge that don't play by the rules sorts so let's call him Trigger-Happy Jack, shows up and straps Spence
to a big metal table & tells him he's getting surprise heart surgery. You see our man Spence may or may not be an Alpha
Centauri doppelganger with a bomb in his chest. While Spence leads us to believe there is a non-invasive scan test that could
determine this, Trigger-Happy Jack decides better safe then sorry, he's just finished his rather uncomfortable villain monologue,
besides he's got the heart drill all warmed up & ready.
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| Imposter is your in-flight movie in Hell |
Really the whole heart drill scene is a little traumatic, because you already like Spence and you start to doubt that
Trigger-Happy Jack is completely on the up & up, I mean he kinda gives you the impression he took the job for the heart
drilling first & the protecting the people of Earth second. So naturally Spence takes the first opportunity to run. Lucky
for him then that he is promptly unstrapped and escorted to the heart drill table by feeble and easily spooked guards, so
he gets away with relatively little trouble by using the special martial arts all engineers of the future know. There’s
this real odd scene where as Spence is escaping he accidentally kills his friend, it's odd because you see Buddy Gonnabiteit
for a solid couple seconds and you're totally aware who it is & then Spence shoots him & it's like, uh, Spence you
had plenty of time not to shoot him, what's up with that? And for the rest of the movie he refers to it as an accident and
he's all saddened by it, but when it happened it sure didn't look like an accident & I wonder did he really shoot his
friend on purpose or does the director just suck at his job & am I over thinking this movie? Also Spence was drugged and
while there are a couple references to it, it never really comes into play.
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| I must return this script to the fires of Mount Doom from whence it was forged! |
Now here comes the rest of the movie, at 1 hour & 42 minutes this movie is clearly a whole hour longer than it needs
to be. Seriously this review is probably already longer than the movie needed to be. So Spence runs off to "The Zone" which
is the part of town where all the poor live where they don't have protection from the Centauri invaders, but also don't have
to put up with nearly so much of that SS bullshit that goes on in the city. There he meets Cale (Mekhi Phifer, who's as hot
as he is talented) and the movie becomes a bit of a buddy flick (careful there Cale, Spence has been known to shoot buddies)
meets low rent chase flick. This is about the time I decided to start rooting for Trigger-Happy Jack, after all he may be
a complete psycho, but if he had had his way this movie would be over like 20 minutes ago, so bring on the heart drill and
let's get this crap over with already! You see Spence wants to return to the city to have his wife (who's a doctor I guess)
do that scan thingie that will prove he's not an alien bomb (oh in case you are keeping score, people who think Spence is
an alien bomb: everyone, people who think Spence is not an alien bomb: one).
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| Pictured: your guess is as good as mine |
So Spence has to sneak back in and there's this scene where Spence takes his locator chip (you know in the future we all
have those) and plants it on Trigger-Happy Jack and his special police forces spend a good fifteen minutes running around
the building in circles thinking that they are chasing Spence. Not only does this scene play out practically in real time
but there's even some slo-mo for the really exciting "we were just here" shots. Did I mention that Gary Dourdan is in this
too? Geez, he's so hot, doesn't help this movie a bit though because you hardly see him, the movie is exceptionally dark &
shadowy. No really there were a couple scenes in the tunnels where I confused Mehki Phifer for Gary Sinise, it's that dark.
Anyhoo they get to the hospital & Spence almost gets to complete his scan thing but before he gets to the heart portion
of the torso Trigger-Happy Jack shows up & he's on the run again! Now I find this to be the defining moment for both these
characters. Spence runs off way too early, it's like he doesn't really want to know if he's the bomb. Plus, he's got the scan
machine all warmed up why not just let him finish? Why not? Cause Jack is only interested in heart drilling, that's why. So
we've got a guy who doesn't want to know the truth and a guy who doesn't care what the truth is, great, thanks so much for
inviting me to your movie that goes nowhere.
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| Crotch Probeulator 9000: Just because it's futuristic doesn't mean it's practical |
So I'm about to totally blow the super secret "please do not reveal the secret ending of Imposter" ending. So if you haven't
seen this movie I am about to save you and hour and 42 minutes. So Spence decides that if he finds the ship that crashed with
the alien bomb on board he can prove that the pilot died before it got the chance to replicate him. The movie doesn't really
explain why Spence thinks this, he just does, probably because he's grasping at straws, completely aware that he's totally
the bomb. So he gets to the crash site with his wife who totally thinks he's the bomb and Trigger-Happy Jack is fast closing
in with his minions in tow. Trigger-Happy Jack is all like "Hey don't open that you don't want to know what's in there, besides
I've already figured it out, even though there's no reason you should believe me and there's no real reason for me to have
figured this out." Of course Spence doesn't listen to him because Jack's not even remotely credible and probably also an alien
bomb. I mean sure, why not. Anyway Spence opens the cockpit to reveal his dead wife, Maya, that is his real dead wife and
not the alien bomb standing beside him. Trigger-Happy Jack shoots her dead of course because that's what you are supposed
to do to alien bombs. Then Gary Sinise emotes for a bit, where he's holding his dead alien bomb wife and ignoring his dead
non alien bomb wife.
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| Please do not reveal the secret ending of Impostor! |
Then, big surprise, another part of the ship is open to reveal the real dead Spence, much to the chagrin of alien bomb
Spence. This is hands down the stupidest part of the movie. The movie has gone out of it's way to portray government agent
Trigger-Happy Jack as the kind of guy that would shoot you for looking at him funny, he doesn't seem to have a problem putting
bullets through things in a speedy fashion. Yet for some reason when it is revealed that Spence is in fact the alien bomb
he has believed him to be all along, you know the kind that is about to blow up, he does nothing. He just looks at Spence
with this look on his face like "Oh, well that part I hadn't figured out." and lets bomb-Spence blow everybody up. Which I
guess is just as well because since this movie has just spent the last hour and 40 minutes wasting my time with pointless
chase sequences as opposed to having some actual insight into what we consider identity and what we believe is our soul and
the dehumanizing of society in times of war and what not, I don't really care about what happens to anyone in this movie as
long as it ends soon. Although I think it would have been funny if when Spence realized he was a bomb at that moment Jack
also realized he too was a bomb & then they both exploded at once, destroying the Earth. Then at least we could view this
movie as an intentional parody of the sci-fi short story, instead of the waste of celluloid it is.
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