I really enjoyed this one. Sweet movie. Philip K. Dick was a genius. Anyway...

As Jaeger said, it appears that the majority of people on imdb gave this one poor reviews. I'll just have to disagree in this case.

The plot premise is one that will be familiar to most scifi fans, but it was well executed. Humanity is in a war against an alien race intent upon taking over earth. The protagonist is a weapons designer, played by Gary Sinise, who has created the apparent equivilant of an atomic bomb to use against the aliens.

But on the eve of the launch of the weapon, he is hauled away by his own government, taken to an interrogation room, and accussed of not being himself! The interrogator claims he is a synthetically created organic robot carrying a bomb inside his heart. The bomb cannot be detected by ordinary sensors, and this replicant in every way duplicates the behavior of its human counterpart, which was allegedly murdered when the alien duplicate landed.

Not only does the replicant perfectly mimic his behavior, it also shares his memories, sensory perceptions, and emotions (as far as anyone can tell). But there is just one thing, the interrogator claims, which God gave man, and cannot be duplicated: The soul. (This opening beckons the audience to ponder throughout the movie an eternal question debated for centuries by philosophers and theologians: What exactly is a soul? Can the essence of a living being be verified?)

The movie contains an interesting mix of references and philosophical ideas. On one level, it could be interpreted as being a parable for the Red Scare, as the McCarthy-esque investigator relentlessly searches for alien impostors, and doesn't mind killing a few humans in the process of zealously finding the replicants. (Substitute "communist" for "replicant", and there you have it.)

In the opening dialog, Sinise discusses the history of World War 2, in which the inventor of the atomic bomb was later charged with being a communist sympathiser because he expressed concern about how this weapon of mass destruction might be used. This discussion, in a vaguely abstract way, foreshadows the coming events. But our hero is not charged with being a communist, or even sympathizing with the enemy; the very authenticity of his identity is brought into question.

How do you know that you are who you are? How do you know that you are what you are? Even with a machine which could scan every molecule in one's body, is it possible to verify that something is a living being, and that this being is itself?

On a third level, it could be said that the movie attempts in part to answer this question using one of Hollywood's most frequent refrains: It's all about looove. I won't go into detail, or give spoilers, but suffice it to say that both the beginning and the ending underscore this point.

Regarding character inconsistencies. Perhaps the movie does try to stretch itself too far, especially in regard to the apparent villian of the story. If it does suffer this fault, I believe it is due to the writers mixing more human metaphors than can believably fit into a single personality or three.

I'll overlook this, because I like movies that try to operate on multiple levels, perhaps going beyond the bounds of concrete rationality in some regards. Not everyone may feel the same.

So... excellent movie. It probably would have never even crossed my radar if the netflix copy had not been in Jaeger's possession at the time of the last night's event. The second annual obscurely contorted voting system worked well. Hurray!