Rating- * * * * (4/5)
This is one of those movies like The Usual Suspects or Vanilla Sky that is so out there, you either love it or you hate it. Like the other two movies, Identity pulls out a crazy twist near the film’s end that totally changes the nature of everything you’ve seen so far in the film. But unlike the other two films, the twist in Identity comes at the middle of the third act, which to you non-drama folks means that there is still a lot of story left after we get the big shock. This is certainly an interesting path to take but the problem is that the shock is allowed to set in and register with us before the film ends. In the other two films, the shock comes so suddenly and that we are never even given a chance to catch our breath before the movie ends, which can be amazingly effective on us as an audience. I don’t mean to say that the popular device of the surprise ending necessarily makes a movie good (as any critic who saw The Life of David Gale will tell you). These shocking end-of-the-movie revelations must still fit the tone and theme of the overall film or else they risk compromising the plot’s integrity or more importantly the message of the film. Identity is a film that certainly holds up outside of its shocking revelations with a fantastically moody look and one of the best casts anyone could ask for. The film begins in a Nevada courthouse in the middle of a dark stormy night where a judge has been called in for an emergency hearing about a death row inmate. A psychologist (Alfred Molina) says that he has some startling new evidence that could save the inmate but the hearings cannot take place until the inmate arrives. This storyline then takes a backseat to our main plotline where a veritable bouquet of innocent and not-so-innocent strangers find themselves stranded one by one at a remote desert motel during a heavy storm. We know little or nothing about these characters at first but over the course of their evening we will learn that they all have quite interesting and well-developed back-stories. Ed Dakota (played by the always great John Cusack) is a former police detective who met with tragedy and now drives a limo for a spoiled ex-movie star. Paris (Amanda Peet) is a prostitute trying to get out of the business and is headed to Florida to start her own citrus grove. Then there’s the mysterious cop (Ray Liotta) that shows up toting a convicted serial-killer who is transferring prisons. The irony of this screenplay, we will come to discover, is that none of these back-stories really matter at all to the story yet the screenwriter bothers to develop them with extreme detail because it adds that much more depth to the film’s shocking conclusion. Anyway, as you might expect from a story that sets up this way, the motel guests begin to get killed off one by one. Is the killer one of the guests or someone that we haven’t yet discovered? We are left to wonder as more and more guests are killed off each time having a numbered motel key placed on their body that serves as a sort of grim countdown. Things really start to get mysterious when people start dying in ways that don’t even seem planned and yet the numbered key is still there. An important thing to know for any movie like this is what Roger Ebert calls the Law of Economy of Character. This law basically states that in a situation where a limited number of characters the character who seems the least necessary will in fact become the most important. This is a good thing to look for in any movie like this and since it was well-imbedded in me I had a pretty good guess at who the killer was before it was revealed in the movie. This does not, however, mean that I was not completely blindsided by the aforementioned twist this movie throws out, which I was not even close to expecting. When you start to watch this film, you’ll think it is a smartly written, suspenseful, extremely well-made horror film with a great cast to boot. When you finish watching this film, you’ll think it was either mean for tricking you or if you’re an intelligent filmgoer you’ll think that it’s a brilliantly conceptual psychological thriller with a great cast to boot. I have been very careful in this review to reveal as little as possible since I have the utmost respect for an audience’s desire to be surprised but I will say one more thing concerning what you will discover about the true nature of the film. It occurred to me that this film is quite similar to Donald Kaufman’s screenplay The 3 in last year’s Adaptation. In that respect, I have to agree with everything his brother Charlie criticizes about the cheap tricks being used but in the case of Identity I think the film can be excused since, unlike Donald’s idiotic and hilariously cliché script, a second viewing will show that the film is consistent and matches up with the conclusions drawn at the end. Good, now I only ruined it for people that saw Adaptation (which by the way you should definitely see after you watch Identity). Identity is one of the smartest thrillers I’ve seen in a while and definitely surprised me which I always appreciate. I can highly recommend Identity to anyone who doesn’t mind thinking a little harder about a movie plot and to anyone who is a fan of old school, Hitchcockian suspense.