Impostor

A visual assault course of a movie, this adaptation of Philip K Dick's 1950s sci-fi short story provides just enough paranoid, futuristic atmosphere to compensate for a confusing, fractured narrative. Scientist Spencer Olham (Sinise) has the dome-shielded, alien-threatened Earth of 2079 sussed. He's happily married to beautiful doctor Maya (Stowe), who administers to the poor outer-worlders, while his own work has defence implications that could be world-saving. On the eve of an important meeting with a senior chancellor, however, he's whisked away for interrogation as a suspected alien replicant by a security major (D'Onofrio). The design and execution of the movie is aimed at the MTV generation rather than the sci-fi aficionado, but beneath the cinematographic murk and trickery, Fleder quickly establishes a discernible whiff of Jacobean intrigue and Machiavellian politics. Sadly, this evaporates as the subsequent escape-and-quest formula takes over. On the plus side, the performances are solid, with Sinise's sobriety and lack of histrionics, especially, making him an anchoring and sympathetic presence.