Hunt the one-man bomb scare

In a few weeks the new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, will be warning us of a Futureworld in which criminals are arrested before they commit their crimes. (Seems to some, of course, that we're already living there.) All praise, then, to this spunky little SF thriller that does the same work, on a tighter budget and smaller scale, based on a story written by the same author, Philip K Dick, in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy era. If Blade Runner or AI occasionally springs to mind, be charitable and forget it. This is the economy-pack Dystopia.

The date is 2079 and Earth is under attack from an advanced race of extra-planetary cyborgs who have a fifth column of suicide bombers active in the city where posters scream "Victory At Any Cost" or "There Is No Alternative". It sounds as if John Ashcroft is still the Attorney-General here. In fact, Vincent D'Onofrio is the ruthless government agent charged with detecting the bombers: he's hit the wrong mark seven times out of 10 and eviscerated innocent citizens for the suspected high explosives in their electronic entrails - but hey, democracy (or what passes for it under totalitarian paranoia) must be defended.

D'Onofrio's latest suspect is Spencer John Olham (Gary Sinise), a weapons expert with a sexy wife (Madeleine Stowe) and a des res in the leafy suburbs where the morning shower is voice-operated and commuter trains give you bump-free rides on the air waves right into the office.

Suddenly, for no reason, save that he fits the profile, Olham is on the operating table, a suspected flesh-covered human bomb, with the pincers descending to pluck the threat from his heart. He escapes, and the rest of the movie is a chase against time to make it to the part of the forest where a cyborg capsule crash-landed and where, he suspects, he'll find a "shell" replicant of himself.

Gary Fleder (Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead) directs the movie as if flipping through the pages of a graphic novel without giving us time to read the bubbles. The end packs a double-whammy surprise, though Philip K Dick fans will have seen it coming aeons before. Still, it held my attention, though the current evidence of suicide bombers not waiting until 2079 to do their work may well have concentrated my mind. We'll soon see what Spielberg has to say on the safety of the realm.

Impostor
Cert: cert12