Identity | Review

Let’s do the twist formula is a let down.

The best way in which to describe this picture is with the words of wisdom John Cusack’s character mutters the remark “yeah”. James Mangold whose only poignant picture move in film history came with the drama-heavy show-casing a surprisingly impressive Stallone in 1997’s Copland, releases the rain heavy and murder friendly, Identity. This labeled thriller is about spilt personalities, insinuated childhood traumas and plenty of backyard motel murders; nope this isn’t a re-release of Hitchcock’s classic, but perhaps the worst homage to Psycho since Gus Van Sant’s project.

Right off the bat, we are given the impression by the mention of a subplot which indicates that eventually the rug will be pulled from underneath us. Unfortunately, the majority of the film is spent suffocating on a pointless narrative which is unimportant to the understanding of the victim/protagonist. Before the Friday the 13th mystery of gruesome murders and idiotic coincidences, there is the fun film-opening which sees a fun trickery in the sequence of events, the open road and desert space and heavy rain is always scary, what is even more scarier is when a character must change a spare tire in the dark- it spells trouble, especially if your wife takes one step too many onto the road. The heavy doses of rain strand all the character in one hotel, while a person dies the hotel clerk is busy serving guests. The bigger names of the film play crappy characters with horrible dialogue, Cusack (Being John Malkovich) plays a limo-driver, former cop with excellent needle and thread skills who becomes camp counselor of the motel, while Ray Liotta (Narc) plays the guy with the usual two-face personality. It is the subplot character of the dude in white (Alfred Molina-Frida) and Mangold’s star from Heavy Pruitt Taylor Vince who intrigue the viewer just enough to tell us that the rest of the main plot is unimportant even as the rain ensures that Amanda Peet (High Crimes) gives it up for a wet-t-shirt contest. Poor Peet she probably caught the ammonia during filming.

While we suffer though the entrée and main course of an over-the-top elimination round process and 10-9-8-7 motel key number premise before cutting to the dessert. At this point the filmmaker think they got a clever and smart flick, but in all actuality, it is everything but that Cronenberg managed to approach this whole idea a lot better withSpider. Unfortunately, the film is in major lack of suspense, which kills the film quickly enough so that you find yourself laughing away at the sheer idiocy of it all. With terrible dialogue, people reacting to murders with a grain of salt, and of course, the misleading technique which replaces one character for the shoes of another goes beyond frustration. Besides the rain, Identity doesn’t offer the proper amount of anything making it the kind of picture where the previews of a film are bad, and the film is worse.

Rating 0.5 stars