IMPOSTOR (2002) Even the movie's an impostor! The DVD of Impostor comes with a "short film" version of the movie. I have no idea where this came from, or how or why it was "expanded" into a feature-length movie. But I do know this - the "short film" is way, way better than the feature. In fact, it's most of the first and last fifteen minutes of the movie, with less polished effects. Impostor, based on a Philip K. Dick story I haven't read, is basically one of those "The Fugitive...with (novelty twist)" movies. In this case, the novelty twist is that Richard Kimble is being chased not because the cops think he killed his wife, but because they think he's an android replica of the real guy, with a devastating bomb planted in his body. So convincing are these replicas that even they think they're the real deal, protesting their innocence right up unto the point where the bomb-removal machine bloodily rips them open and tears out their explosive hearts. Impostor opens with a narrated montage telling us that it's the future, and we're under attack from aliens. If that attack footage looks familiar, it should - it's actually meteor-strike footage from Armageddon. In the future, we live under domes, and news anchors have an annoying habit of letting their faces drift halfways off camera. Gary Sinise is in the Richard Kimble role, playing a scientist who has developed a mighty superweapon to be used against the nasty aliens who are responsible for these kaboombots. Just what this superweapon does, I would've liked to have been told, 'cuz superweapons are always a lot of fun. His wife (Madeline Stowe) gets to...uh, be his wife, while Vincent D'Onofrio gets to be the guy in charge of chasing these threats down. He of course thinks Sinise is just such a threat...and the movie writes itself. Sort of. The short film is, while not unpredictable, at least fairly enjoyable. The feature-length movie sticks an hour - a whole goddamn hour! - of fairly low-tech, tired "90's sci-fi" shit in the middle. You know, lots of well-educated, misfit homeless guys from Johnny Mnemonic. By the time those last fifteen minutes come up again, one realizes that it all didn't matter. We're still where we were an hour ago. Regardless of that awful middle hour, there are still some problems. Is it really in the aliens' best interests to program their kaboombots with such a conviction of their own humanity that they'll go to any length to prove it? And have these aliens never heard of cleaning up the evidence? I mean, I give them credit for attacking humanity with footage from a movie as awful as Armageddon - but we never seen an alien in this movie, we never find out anything about them, least of all whether or not they have any concept of rationality. Impostor has some awesome, all-too-brief cityscapes, and a lot of good sets and hardware. The actors are all good, and it really does make for a fairly diverting short film. But it makes for a pretty lousy feature. Impostor is just that - a half-hour short film masquerading as a 96-minute feature. BACK TO THE I's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE