Jamie
I keep on wanting to write, ‘Saboteur!’ when thinking about this film. But alas, this is just about some dumb bum imposter played by Gary Sinise. Our boy Gary gets his star turn in this film that can be best summed up as a one-note story streeeetched veeerrrry looooong. May as well get into a short recap with that, because the entire film is about that one note: is Gary Sinise an imposter?
So Gary wakes up with his beautiful wife after a weekend camping trip relaxed and ready to show off a hot new weapon he designed for the big war with humanity’s intergalactic foes. Don’t worry about that camping trip. Sure there was a big ol’ fire but Gary is like “huh, what? Oh yeah we’re fine,” so the viewer can rest assured that the camping trip was no big deal and won’t play a role in the plot in the least. Just as he prepares for the big day Vincent D’Onofrio walks in and is like “Imposter!” and arrests him. He explains that the aliums have developed a new weapon and it’s real cool. Basically they send replicas of humans to Earth who don’t even know they’re replicas. They kill their doubles, assume their lives, wake up with all their memories, and go on with their lives… that is until they get switched on and assassinate someone. Sinise is like bullshit and springs free with his classic Gary Sinise strength. He’s able to contact his wife and attempts to get a body scan to prove he’s not an imposter, but is again chased off by D’Onofrio. He and his wife realize the key to all this is the camping trip (woah, what?) and so they head into the forest where D’Onofrio assures Sinise that he believes him. That’s because in the forest is an alien spaceship and inside is bum bum bum his wife’s body! (What a twist!) They kill the imposter wife but then find bum bum bum Gary Sinise’s hot bod in there too! (What a double twist!) He explodes. THE END.
There was a moment very early in the film (when they kept on droning on and on about the camping trip) that I thought, “wouldn’t it be funny if Sinise just turned out to be an imposter?” Like a whole movie set up around someone being like “I’m not an imposter!” but then he is. You’ve just watched an entire movie where the main character is an alien but doesn’t know it so it’s not even fun in an alien kind of way. And then they did it! It’s pretty dumb and makes the majority of the movie meaningless. If I rewatched it now Gary would be whining “but I love my wiiiife,” and I’d just shrug and be like ‘no you don’t cause you are just some alien drone so why should I listen to you? Sure you have all the memories of Gary Sinise. You’ve got those abs for days, for sure. I appreciate all that… but you’re also just gonna blow up and you’re not really Gary Sinise… no one is. Only Gary Sinise is. He’s a one of one.”
For a Hot Take Clam Bake I’m gonna come out and say it: the aliens’ plan was dumb and bad and failed. Sinise was supposed to blow up a giant weapon he designed and kill the leader of Earth (or something like that). Instead he blows up Vincent D’Onofrio in the middle of a razed forest. Guess what happens next? Big Gary’s weapon blows up the aliens. Because he’s got a big ol’ brain and knew how to kick their asses. Maybe the aliens should have just blown up the weapon when Fake Gary was hanging around the weapon all day. Nope. Let’s just blow up nothing cause we’re dumb. Dumb aliens. Dumb weapon. Dumb plan. You lose.
Hot Take Temperature: Day Old Wildfire. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Imposter? More like Low-cost-er! Amirite? Gary Sinese v. Vincent D’Onofrio babbbbby! YEAH! What? You aren’t jazzed for that CSI: NY vs. Law & Order: Criminal Intent clash? The Battle of the Second Spin-off Stars? This is huge! Let’s go!
- Throughout the years we’ve established nice concise phrases for certain types of films. Our most internationally famous one is obviously Dog Poo In Our Face for those films that are so bad they make us irrationally angry. This film ain’t that. This film is the second-most-popular classic Nothing Film. It is a film you’ve seen one-thousand times which feels like no one remembers and if it never existed the world wouldn’t change even a little bit. This film is a Nothing Film.
- Basically this film feels like a less well known Phillip K. Dick short story that was squashed between The Minority Report and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale so no one remembers it until someone was like “do we have any more Phillip K. Dick stories to adapt”, and someone opened wikipedia and was like “only one … it’s called Imposter?”
- To be clear this is actually based on a Phillip K. Dick story, I’m not making that up. It was first published in the magazine Astounding in June 1953 and can be found in some of his collections. That being said ain’t no one running out of Phillip K. Dick short stories to adapt, there are a billion of them.
- Oh the movie, I almost forgot (because it is a nothing film). It uh … well, it um … D’Onofrio is suitably crazy in this I suppose? The whole thing seems to take place at night. The ultimate twist is so obvious that they felt the need to make the twist even twistier … but even then it was really obvious, and they didn’t have the guts to change the actual ultimate twist enough for me to really care that I kind of got it wrong.
- I guess what I’m getting at is that this is a poor man’s Minority Report, and even that isn’t really considered very good anymore, so what really does that make this? Bad, I suppose. It makes it a bad movie.
- Obviously a great Future Setting (When?) for a film that is sorely lacking in any superlatives. Well except for one of the worst Worst Twists (How?) ever in that it was obvious from the beginning that you are following around an evil android who is going to blow everyone up at the end (and he does). It is closest to Bad I think, just a Nothing Movie.
Check out the Quiz for my sequel Impo2ter. You kind of know it would be stylized like that right? Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 