Impostor (2001 film) - Misplaced Pages

2001 film directed by Gary Fleder This article is about the 2001 science fiction film. For other films with similar titles, see Impostor (disambiguation).

Impostor
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gary Fleder
Screenplay by	Caroline Case Ehren Kruger David Twohy
Adaptation by	Scott Rosenberg

Based on	"Impostor" by Philip K. Dick
Produced by	Gary Fleder Marty Katz Daniel Lupi Gary Sinise
Starring	Gary Sinise Madeleine Stowe Vincent D'Onofrio Tony Shalhoub Tim Guinee Mekhi Phifer
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Edited by	Armen Minasian Bob Ducsay
Music by	Mark Isham
Production companies	Marty Katz Productions Mojo Films
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release dates	October 27, 2001 (2001-10-27) (Japan) December 4, 2001 (2001-12-04) (California) January 4, 2002 (2002-01-04) (United States)
Running time	96 minutes (Theatrical Cut) 102 minutes (Director's Cut)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million
Box office	$8 million

Impostor is a 2001 American science fiction psychological thriller 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.

Plot

In the year 2039, Earth is attacked by an alien civilization from Alpha Centauri. Force field 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.

Thirty years later, Spencer Olham, a designer of top-secret government weapons, is arrested while on his way to work 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 is 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 Maya 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 as well. 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.

A news announcement states that Hathaway and the Olhams were killed in an alien enemy attack, implying that the government covered up or are unaware of the truth. 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 Major D.H. 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 cameo role)
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

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 spacecraft 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.

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

Reception

Critical response

Impostor received negative reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 24% based on 96 reviews, averaging to a score of 4.0 out of 10.0. The site's critical consensus reads, "With its low production value and uninspired direction, Impostor comes off as a mixture of The Fugitive and Blade Runner, only not as good or as involving." 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 The A.V. Club gave the film a negative review, saying that "it essentially uses the setup of 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".

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").

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.

References

^ "Impostor (2002) - Financial Information". The-numbers.com. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
"Impostor". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved December 5, 2010.
"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 (Downloadable PDF file)
"Impostor - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes.
"Imposter (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
"Impostor". Metacritic.com. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
"Review: Impostor". preview.reelviews.net. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
"Mundane 'Impostor' has its moments". Seattlepi.com. January 4, 2002. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
"Impostor". TVGuide.com. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
Keith Phipps (March 29, 2002). "Imposter". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Archived from the original on May 29, 2011.
Robert Koehler (January 2, 2002). "Also Playing: Impostor". Variety.
Scott, A. O. (January 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 August 22, 2017.

External links

Impostor at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Impostor at Box Office Mojo
Impostor at IMDb
Impostor at Metacritic
Impostor at Rotten Tomatoes
Impostor at the TCM Movie Database

Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Valis (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness (The Cosmic Puppets)" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2001) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017) 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017) Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)
TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015) Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams (2017) Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2021) Blade Runner 2099 (upcoming)
Franchise	Blade Runner franchise

Works about

Only Apparently Real (1986 biography)
I Am Alive and You Are Dead (1993 biography)
Your Name Here (2008 drama film)

Isa Dick Hackett (daughter)
Philip K. Dick Award

v t e Films directed by Gary Fleder
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995) Kiss the Girls (1997) Don't Say a Word (2001) Impostor (2001) Runaway Jury (2003) The Express: The Ernie Davis Story (2008) Homefront (2013) A Midsummer's Nightmare (2017)

v t e Films by Ehren Kruger
Written	Killers in the House (1998) Arlington Road (1999) New World Disorder (1999) Scream 3 (2000) Reindeer Games (2000) Impostor (2001) The Ring (2002) Rings (2005) The Ring Two (2005) The Skeleton Key (2005) The Brothers Grimm (2005) Blood & Chocolate (2007) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) Ghost in the Shell (2017) Dumbo (2019, also produced) Top Gun: Maverick (2022) F1 (2025)
Produced	Dream House (2011) Ophelia (2018)

Films by Ehren Kruger

Written

Killers in the House (1998)
Arlington Road (1999)
New World Disorder (1999)
Scream 3 (2000)
Reindeer Games (2000)
Impostor (2001)
The Ring (2002)
Rings (2005)
The Ring Two (2005)
The Skeleton Key (2005)
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Blood & Chocolate (2007)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Dumbo (2019, also produced)
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
F1 (2025)

Produced

Dream House (2011)
Ophelia (2018)

v t e Films by David Twohy
Written and directed	Timescape (1992) The Arrival (1996) Pitch Black (2000) Below (2002) The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) A Perfect Getaway (2009) Riddick (2013) Riddick: Furya (TBA)
Written only	Critters 2: The Main Course (1988) Warlock (1989) The Fugitive (1993) Terminal Velocity (1994) Waterworld (1995) G.I. Jane (1997) Impostor (2001) The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004, short)

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