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Impostor | 2002 | PG-13 | - 4.6.5

It is 2079 and the Earth has been at war with aliens for a decade. An admired and successful scientist (Gary Sinise), whose latest project promises to save humans, is accused of being a spy for the aliens, sent to assassinate a government official. He now has to prove his identity to himself and the police, and has to do it in time to save the planet. Based on a Philip K. Dick short story. Also with Madeleine Stowe, Vincent D'Onofrio, Mekhi Phifer and Tony Shaloub. [1:36]

SEX/NUDITY 4 - One sex scene, with several flashbacks to it: we hear the man and woman moaning and see their bare backs as they roll back and forth kissing passionately and caressing each other. A man and woman kiss passionately and the man caresses the woman's knee. A man and woman kiss romantically. A woman nurses an infant and we see her bare breast but the nipple is covered by the child. We see a man bare to the hips in a shower and we see a man bare-chested and strapped to a chair. There are a few scenes of women wearing outfits which expose some cleavage. We see several full body x-ray scans of a man (his hands cover his private parts). There's some sexual innuendo: a man makes a comment about a particular sex act that a woman likes, and a man makes a comment about a wild animal "on the make."

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - Because the film is uniformly under-lit, much of the gore is not easily discernible. We see a recorded image of a man strapped to a table screaming with a three-bladed mechanism whirring over his chest (we focus elsewhere but hear the crunching and squishing and then see the man's heart out of his chest). A man lies face-down on a table and a woman cuts along his spine with a scalpel to remove an identifying device (we see the scalpel making an incision, hear him complain of the pain, see the blood-covered device after it is removed and see the incision being closed with a laser-type device). A man shoots three men in an elevator, and a woman is shot repeatedly in the back (we see the bloody holes and watch her being zipped into a body bag). A man is unstrapped from a table by two men, he punches one man and stabs the other. A man holds a gun to another man's temple, and a man shoots another man while he is being held by another man. Some innocent people are shot during a few of the gunfights. A man is hit by a thrown weapon and he's sent flying through the air. A fight ensues with lots of punching, kicking, hitting with pipes and spear-like weapons, and one man is shot and lies dead on the ground. A man is injected in the hand with a pointed metal device (we see some smoldering, some blood at the site of the injection and he falls to the ground having a seizure of some kind). We see a large number of body bags and one is opened to show a person's very bloody face. Two men fight a group of people with punches and kicks, one man is stabbed in the stomach, another man runs away and is surrounded by men with guns drawn. Two men climb through a huge fan blade which they have jammed. A man is threatened by a group of men with guns, his hands are tied and he's shoved into a room and lands hard on the floor (we see blood on his forehead). People are rousted out of a condemned building, shoved around and hit. A man is shoved, kicked and threatened with a gun to his head by another man a couple of times. A man spends most of the movie on the run from armed troops who chase him through tunnels, woods, city streets, abandoned buildings and a hospital. There is a comment made about a man having been flayed alive. The introductory scenes carry a boy's voice giving details of a war between an alien race and Earth; he tells us that his father was killed by the alien invaders. We see a huge explosion and hear a news report that there were many casualties. We see many scenes of demolished cities on news broadcasts. A man has a scarred face and appears to be undergoing interrogation or torture. Some blood trickles from a cut on a man's arm, a man has a cut finger, and several people are shown with bloody, scarred and blistered faces. We see a man strapped to a chair with wires attached to his temples. There is a discussion of the bombing of Hiroshima and the people who were killed. The film is permeated with a sense of impending danger.

LANGUAGE 5 - 1 F-word, 3 scatological terms, 6 mild obscenities, 3 religious profanities, 7 religious exclamations.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Alien invasions, war mongering, war crimes, treason, the soul, assassination, proof of the existence of God, trust, replication, DNA.

MESSAGE - We lose lives to progress.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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