Review of "Identity" -- Rhinotainment

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Date Posted: 12:28:44 04/27/03 Sun
Author: The Rhino
Subject: Review of "Identity"

This was my reaction to the big plot twist towards the end of the new thriller, Identity: "..........whoa."

That's about all I could say. I was so blown away by the direction the storyline took and that it was so flawless. While the film borrowed here and there from other horror/thrillers of the past (including the Dirty Harry film Tightrope, but most people won't pick that up), the plot twist and the outcome was pretty original. I was floored.

But enough beating around the bush, you say. Identity stars John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, John C. McGinley, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Clea Duvall, Alfred Molina and Rebecca DeMornay. Now THAT'S a cast!

Cusack plays Ed Dakota, a limo driver and former cop. Cusack's job is to drive washed up actress Caroline Suzanne (DeMornay, ironically enough) across Nevada to Los Angeles. A flood has swept across the desert land and has made for rough driving conditions and driving the spoiled Caroline is no treat in itself.

John C. McGinley plays the uptight and Rain Man-like George York. He is driving his wife, Alice (Leila Kenzle) and step-son, Timothy (Bret Loehr) when suddenly they inherit a flat tire. While the Yorks investigate why the tire went flat, Ed accidentally runs over Alice while searching for Caroline's cell phone. She is bleeding profusely from the neck and needs to be taken to a hospital. Word comes soon that the road behind them is flooded and there is no way out, so Ed loads them up in the limo and heads for the nearest stop, a roadside motel.

Along the way, they see a stranded motorist. Amanda Peet plays Paris Nevada, a prostitute with big dreams of getting out of the whoring business and into her own orange orchard in her home state of Florida. Paris flags down Ed, who loads her up as well.

Once they arrive at the motel, they find that the phone lines are down due to the storm. A police vehicle pulls up to the motel. Ray Liotta plays Rhodes, a cop escorting Jake Busey's convict, Robert Maine, to a local prison. His radio, too, is not working. So Ed and Paris head down the road to find a hospital.

After a couple of miles, they realize that the road in that direction is flooded as well when Ed gets stuck in a moat-like river running across the road. Another car approaches, carrying two quarreling newlyweds, Ginny (Clea Duvall) and Lou (William Lee Scott). They pick up Ed and Paris and head back to the motel.

Once they get back, the clerk, Larry (John Hawkes), assigns them all to rooms. Caroline wants out of the low-rent motel, so she begins trying to get out on her cell phone. She can't get reception in her room, so she wraps up in the shower curtain and heads out into the rain, which is real smart. When finally trying to make a call, she gets blindsided and later, found murdered. Ed discovers the murder and at this point, it's revealed that Ed was once a cop, so he and Rhodes begin to investigate the murder. They discover that Maine has escaped and immediately blame him for the murders until he ends up dead himself.

One by one, the motel patrons begin to die grisly deaths. When the bodies are found, there is a room key found on their person. Caroline is found with key #10 on her, but that is not her room. The keys that are found on the bodies of the victims have numbers that descend in order from ten. After trying to piece together the events of the night, they discover a couple of odd coincidences: They were all born on May 10th and they are all named after a state in some way. So why would anyone want to kill these people for these silly coincidences?

Interspersed with all the chaos going on at the motel, there is an court case happening somewhere else in Nevada where a man (the superbly creepy, shifty-eyed Pruitt Taylor Vince) is getting a last minute appeal before being put to death. It seems the man is mentally unstable and went on a nasty murder spree due to his multiple personality disorder. What does this have to do with what is happening at the motel?

I couldn't possibly tell you anything else about this film other than if you don't see it, you're just foolish. This is one of the best crafted horror/thrillers that I have seen in some time. When it began, I was afraid it was going to be a cookie cutter thriller, but I didn't want to believe it because Cusack has always chosen his parts wisely. That's not to say he hasn't had his dogs, but his good films outweigh his bad by a large margin. The same could be said for Liotta.

The acting is great in the film. There are only a couple of moments of overacting (Peet goes on a "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?!?!?" screaming fit that could have been saved for the teen slasher flicks), but other than that, everyone is top shelf. McGinley, one of the most underrated character actors working, goes from his usual stern approach (his asshole doctor in the NBC sitcom, Scrubs) to one of the meekest, mild mannered characters that you could imagine. From reciting a car manual's description from memory, verbatim, what you should do when the tire blows out to sitting sadly at his wife's bedside as she slowly dies; he is a pitiful sight. A man who just wanted to be a good husband and a better father for his troubled stepson, he has had his world completely torn down in a matter of minutes. I think the performance was a bit overlooked in the scheme of things due to the chaos surrounding his character.

And the twist! The twist is to be savored. In a time when filmmakers like M.Night Shyamalan and David Fincher have made mind blowing twists common place, director James Mangold (Heavy, Copland) sidesteps and completely pulls the carpet out from under the storyline. To quote James Lipton, "it's masterful."

If you get it, you will consider this to be one of the better thrillers in years. If you don't get it, you weren't meant to.

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