In
1953 Philip K. Dick wrote a futurist short story to rival
George Orwell’s 1984. Nearly fifty years later,
Dick’s Impostor has been brought to the
screen, more convincingly than the 1956 film version of Orwell’s
novel, thanks to director Gary Fleder. The story is set in
the year 2079. Spencer Olham (played by Gary Sinise) begins
the story with a voiceover about his idyllic youth, and then
how a planet in another galaxy attacked Earth in 2044, transforming
his democratic world into a "Victory at any cost"
authoritarianism to save the planet, which is now protected
by Star Wars shields from further attacks and surveillance
technology that detects where everyone is through spinal implants.
Olham makes top secret superweapons but is ambivalent about
their use, as the two planets engage in an endless arms race.
Major Hathaway (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) is in charge
of a pursuit of alien intruders that were sent on a spaceship
that crashed near the vacation spot of Olham and his wife,
Dr. Maya Olham (played by Madeleine Stowe). His prime target
is Olham, whom he seizes and pharmacologically neutralizes.
Olham, convinced that he is not an alien, overpowers his captors
and escapes into the netherworld of Earth. In exchange for
a promise to acquire drugs from Veteran’s Hospital to
assist his ailing wife, Cale (played by Mekhi Phifer) assists
Olham in going from the netherworld to the safety of his wife,
who has major responsibility for the hospital. Filmviewers
will clearly by sympathetic to the plight of Olham as a victim
of mistaken identity. Images of the Cold War and McCarthyism
clearly emerge in the story, as well as the surveillance technology
and intolerance of dissent in 1984, but they are overwhelmed
by scenes of Olham’s escape and Hathaway’s pursuit
of the "impostor." Eventually, Hathaway tracks down
Olham, who hoped to have a secret rendezvous with his beloved
Maya near the site of the crash of the alien spaceship. However,
the wreckage reveals that Hathaway was right; indeed, both
the real Olham and Maya are dead; they have been replaced
by the two cyborgs whom we believed all along were human.
MH
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