Identity (2003)

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Director James Mangold owes us big after Kate & Leopold, and Identity is a step in the right direction, even if most of the enjoyable aspects of his new film come from the often imaginative script. Identity is a very unique murder-mystery, but, thanks to Hollywood's inability/refusal to sell a film without giving away 90% of its story in the trailer, anyone without alcoholic parents can figure out what's happening if they've seen the preview and pay attention for the first 45 seconds of the movie. Literally.

After that brief prologue, which informs us that a mass murderer named Malcolm Rivers is going to get the needle the following day, we're shown, via some very cool Rashomon-esque time shifting, how each of our 11 characters wind up stranded at a shady motel outside Las Vegas during a powerful storm that floods the roads and knocks out the phone lines. There's an ex-hooker (Amanda Peet), a former movie star (Rebecca De Mornay) and her driver (John Cusack), a pair of young newlyweds (Clea DuVall and William Lee Scott), an older couple (John C. McGinley and Leila Kenzle) with a mute son (Bret Loehr), a cop (Ray Liotta) and his dangerous transport (Jake Busey), and the employee of the fleabag motel (John Hawkes).

Around 30 minutes into Identity, the first corpse turns up, and once everybody discovers the second, they all realize there's a killer among them. It's like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, which one of the characters references here (though not by name), but most people won't be able to see where the story is headed. All I'll say is that it starts out as just a generic horror film, then drags you somewhere completely unexpected...unless you've seen the trailer, anyway. It gives away a key plot point that isn't revealed until well over an hour into Identity, and that's just stupid and sucky.

Identity, which was written by Jack Frost's (the horror one, not the Michael Keaton version) Michael Cooney, features an enjoyable cast of B and C-list stars as well as enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. The film is paced well and doesn't play longer than its short running time (compared to The Real Cancun). Strangely, there were a lot of things I noticed that the audience at my screening just didn't react to, like a scene that briefly shows a wound in Liotta's back that didn't elicit even a murmur from the crowd. I think there's probably a lot more stuff like that in Identity, but you just don't notice it the first time around. I'm not saying Identity is good enough to merit a second viewing, but those who really dig it might want to give it another go.

1:32 - R for strong violence and language

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X-RAMR-ID: 34928
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1129902
X-RT-TitleID: 1121977
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 6/10