Grade: C-

Verdict: A so-so, made-for-TV something posing as a real movie.

Details: Starring Gary Sinise and Madeleine Stowe. Directed by Gary Fleder. Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi violence, some sensuality and language. Two hours, 16 minutes.

See it: Local theaters and showtimes for Impostor

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Like the legendary 1982 film “Blade Runner,” “Impostor” is based on a story by famed futurist Philip K. Dick. Like “Blade Runner,” it's set in a dark and drizzly future. And like “Blade Runner,” it's concerned with replicants, i.e., androids so lifelike that they themselves believe they're human. “Impostor” is not “Blade Runner.”

In “Impostor,” it's 2079 and Earth is at war with a race of aliens called the Centauri. Our hero, Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise), is a brilliant and respected weapons scientist with a beautiful wife, Maya (Madeleine Stowe).

They spend a lot of time making love or taking romantic hikes in the country wearing what appears to be stuff from the J. Crew catalog.

Everything's going great until a top-level security chief named Hathaway (Vincent D'Onofrio) insists Olham's a replicant. That he's murdered the real Olham, taken his place and intends to detonate a bomb implanted in his chest when he gets close enough to a big-deal political leader. Before you can say, “Where's Ridley Scott when you need him?,” Olham is on the run, desperately trying to prove to his pursuers — and to himself, perhaps? — that he's a real boy.

“Impostor” looks musty, dark and cheap; episodes of the earliest “Star Trek” look better. But you have to say this for it: It gives its core audience — die-hard sci-fi freaks — a lot to like. There are the usual neato gadgets and a nifty twist that may not surprise everyone but is still satisfying. But “Impostor” never builds any tension or real involvement with the characters, and good actors like Tony Shalhoub and Mekhi Phifer are wasted.

Ultimately, “Impostor” is itself an impostor, a Sci-Fi Channel escapee posing as a real movie.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution