Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

mrnunleygo If you like impressive-looking sci-fi with lots of running around, you might like this. On the other hand, if you like thoughtful, intelligent science fiction, you can safely give this one a pass. With a talented cast, good budget, and a terrific premise by Phil Dick (who also inspired the brilliant Blade Runner and Total Recall), this should have been a fine movie. I don't know whether to blame the director, the writer (adapter), or both. (Each has done things I've liked in the past.) There are lots of troublesome inconsistencies, but I want to keep spoilers to a minimum. I can suspend disbelief and I think I have a fair tolerance for implausible heroics and holes in plots. But in science fiction or in fantasy, realism by default must be grounded in the characters, and I couldn't make myself believe the two leads—one a supposedly brainy weapons scientist, the other a top intelligence official—could possibly be so much stupider than the viewing audience. Neither seems capable of self-reflection or insight into the motives of anyone else. An interrogation scene near the beginning of the movie is a brain-numbing disaster. Vincent D'Onofrio's bullet-headed intelligence officer is portrayed as impervious to critical thought and mindlessly cruel. If he believes the circumstances are as he says slightly later in the film, it's senseless for him to act and talk as he does during the interrogation. (Also, didn't anyone ever teach him about the concept of "misinformation"?) Meanwhile, Gary Sinise's rocket scientist, instead of trying to persuade onlookers by asking obvious logical questions, adopts an initial strategy for escape makes no sense whatsoever (and has no obvious point). Mekhi Phifer, good as always, plays the only role that seems remotely plausible. The film director does achieve the small miracle of making a character played by Madeleine Stowe uninteresting, but at least she is given the chance to ask, halfway through the film, the question every character should have been asking from the beginning: "How can you be sure?" That is the central theme of Dick's message, although it's message few of the characters in this film could have understood.

carbuff Really good science fiction. I thought I knew exactly where this was going and was getting bored as it moved toward the seemingly inevitable conclusion, but then it wound up throwing me at the very end. The special effects were kind of cheesy for this day and age, and, unless you are Elon Musk, it is more than a little ridiculous to think that science and technology will advance this far in mere 60 more years; however, the tech stuff that will never actually happen is not really a problem, because these fictions were only plot devices so that the story could explore deeper ideas about existence and identity. For me personally, the ending came out of left field, and I found it downright unsettling. If you let your mind wander, you're left with some things to think about after the show is over. Good stuff.

simondclinch-1 For some reason, this film never got billed in my local cinemas at the time. I only watched it now because I was checking for a Philip K Dick adaptation I hadn't seen and this was the only one remaining for me to see.The plot is wonderfully twisty - no way of guessing the ending either, so I won't spoil that!Plenty of action, although perhaps more could have been done to make the chase sequences more original. Also the score didn't do much for me. Nevertheless, as a sci fi film, it's well worth watching - ranks high in the list of Philip K Dick masterpieces like Bladerunner, Total Recall, Minority Report etc.

Targe I now have the pleasure of having witnessed Gary Sinese's worst movie and worst acting job! I didn't think he could act this bad, given his incredible performances in other works.This tells the story of a distant future (set too close to our own date at 2075) where we are moving out to colonize other stars (having colonized most of our own solar system btw) and at the first stop (wouldn't ya know it!) we encounter a hostile alien race, that amazingly, is pretty much en par with us technologically other than their advanced biological engineering capabilities, leading to a brutal war with nasty alien battlecruisers dropping by every now and again to drop nukes on us, while we dogfight in space with the enemy in futuristic fighters (they blew about 3/4 of the special effects budget in the opening credits and first 5 minutes of the movie) So, obviously the planet Earth has gotten a bit paranoid and harsh through all this, especially when you throw in that the aliens can send 'biological robots' to impersonate us and conduct sabotage missions. To further stretch this plot device to spider silk thin believability, we are also led to believe that when they copy us, they get all of the person's memories, emotions, behaviors, forget they are even an assassin droid, and can morph into a deadly nuclear bomb in seconds when they are triggered, yet this is only detectable by very advanced medical testing.It takes the hard to believe Cylon human replicants to a whole new level, and your left not believing any of it.This of course, leads the ultra-fascist government to abduct and torture anyone who even hints of being an alien, (perhaps a simple "excuse me sir, would you please accompany us to the nearest lab where we can run some routine tests??" would be better than, "I heard you might be an alien! So we are going to drill out your chest to see! Hold still please!")and our poor Gary soon finds himself in this boat. He reacts with horrible acting, to counter the villain torturer's horrible acting. The fight and chase scenes are amateur and hilariously bad. The plot is easily figured out except for the silly second-twist at the very end that really doesn't leave you feeling any better about the movie overall.I would take a definite MISS on this, and if the idea of this intrigues you, I'd recommend re-watching Blade Runner and a few of the new Battlestar Galactica shows instead.