re:mote voices

Title: Impostor
Cast:Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D'Onofrio, Tony Shalhoub, Mekhi Phifer
Director: Gary Fleder

From M. John Harrison’s Centauri Device to Philip K. Dick’s Impostor, a story which puts Earth at war with Alpha Centauri. A 2002 film that has been adapted from the short story by Dick having been on TV the same day I finished reading Harrison’s novel.

I guess as adaptations of Dick’s work go it isn’t too bad, though as far as films go, it isn’t particularly brilliant. The film starts with a dose of head messing that feels like it is sticking close to the source material. The middle section of the film falls into the trap that most of these adaptations do – it becomes an action film, people chasing people about, and does so in such away that it didn’t really need to come from a Dick story to achieve. The end picks the story up again, returning to some degree to the territory the film started with.

Spencer Olham is a weapons designer for Earth forces, committed to the defence against Centauri attacks, especially after they killed his father. However on the same day that he is supposed to be meeting the Earth’s leader he finds himself detained. Drugged up and restrained he is confronted by a Major from the Earth Security Agency. The Major informs him that he is not in fact Spencer Olham at all; he has murdered the real Olham and is sophisticated Centauri robotic bomb. Managing to break free from captivity and convinced that he can prove that he really is who he believes he is, he goes on the run.

The kind of device that lies at the centre of Impostor is one that has cropped up in other film adaptations of material by Philip K. Dick. Like Screamers, set on an alien planet the enemy forces have implemented robot technology to imitate humans. And more obviously, Blade Runner, Olham being called a replicant at several points, just to reinforce the idea that this adaptation of Impostor is something of a poor man’s imitation. But in saying that, I kind of like the fact that Impostor is less flashy and showy than the likes of Minority Report or Paycheck, the more obvious recent adaptations of Dick’s work.