Based on a short story by Science Fiction author Phillip K. Dick, "Impostor" flashes forward into the future where Earth is at war with a powerful alien race known as the Centauri's. This alien race is in constant battle with Earth and has them nearly defeated and Earth has created a dome around the city to protect themselves from the attacks. Scientist Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise) has just created the ultimate weapon but his life is completely changed when he is taken into the custody of the government and is accused of being an organic cyborg spy for the Centauri race programmed to explode upon contact to the supreme Chancellor. The only problem is: he has no idea if he is what they say he is and is now on the run to prove his innocence. Can he escape the government and the relentless pursuits of a skilled aggressive agent (Vincent D'onofrio) who will stop at nothing to catch him?

After being constantly shelved for nearly three years, this was finally released in theaters with a less than open welcome. Panned by critics and movie-goers as a disaster and flopping big- time at the box-office not even cracking the top fifteen, this movie fell through movie limbo forever. I was able to catch this last week on Showtime and I was pleasantly surprised. Phillip K. Dick is behind "Minority Report" and is known for his grim science fiction stories and this presents all his story-telling traits. Like "Minority Report", this is a man-falsely-accused-of-a- crime-is-on-the-run-trying-to-prove-his-innocence-story and though it pales in comparison to "Minority Report", this is actually a good movie.

This has an excellent story and the fact that Gary Sinise, one of my favorite actors, is on as the lead character helped me enjoy this more. He was excellent in "Ransom" and "Forrest Gump" and his character, the humble and heartfelt man Spencer is great. He manages to make his character very believable and his emotions of desperation and anger very relatable. He drives this role with all his acting skill and makes this enjoyable and entertaining. Vincent D'onofrio is the best thing in this movie, acting as the rough tough and bad-ass ESA agent on the hunt for Spencer. He gives charisma by the barrel full and is really a great character. My favorite parts are when he is chasing Spencer through rooms and shooting at him.

Mekhi Pfeiffer (8 Mile, O) gives a good supporting role as Cale, a leader of rebels who lives in the outskirts of the city called "The Dead Zone". He takes Spencer hostage and helps him on his journey for innocence. On the way, he is forced to cooperate with Spencer and eventually takes a liking to him. His action scenes are very believable as he kicks ass with some great martial-arts skill. He's a great character and I rooted for him all the way. Mekhi Pfeiffer usually plays ballsy characters and this one is just another great character for the drawing board. Madeline Stowe gives her due in a small supporting role as Spencer's skeptical wife. She's not in the movie much, but she does have a great purpose in the ending. The movie is chock full of great action and suspense scenes that is helped by the actors and the situations which seem recycled but are still effective. The movie builds up to the ending which is amazing and shocking ultimately resembling an episode of "Twilight Zone" that only Rod Serling could have concocted.

The problem is I've seen this story in so much films, it was hard to identify anything even remotely original in this movie. I've seen it all and this just seems like a low-grade carbon copy of "Minority Report" which was much better. The movie is so grim and depressing and the story-telling at times is slow and sluggish. The characters are poorly developed and the actors just seem bored in this. The scenery is so sterile and un-motivated that it's impossible to enjoy this at times. The movie tries its best to become a cult classic at best but fails as it gives us this horribly edited scenes which can be seen during the sequence where Spencer is having his "sim-code" taken out of his back. A lot of the characters are not shown as often as I would have liked so scenes that involve them don't have much impact. Madeline Stowe and D' Onofrio are wasted in this movie, rarely shown and under-used.

This is a really good science fiction adventure that wasn't given a good chance at the theaters. The ending will make up for it's bad editing and story-telling.