Identi-KIT (Identity (DVD))

Member Name: sandrabarber

Product:	Identity (DVD)
Date:	04/03/04 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: John Cusack's in it

Disadvantages: He's not any good, Neither is anyone else, It's ludicrous

It is darkest night. There is a torrential rainstorm. Roads become flooded. Public phone lines are brought down. Cell phones cannot get signals. Ten strangers are forced to abandon their journeys and take refuge at a lonely motel run by a guy not shuffling a full deck.

So far, so Hitchcock.

The motel is next to an ancient Indian burial ground. It is spooky.

So far, so Stephen King.

One by one, the ten start to die ? each hideously murdered by an unknown, unseen assailant. Unless they stick together, there will be nobody left.

Fortunately, however, at least one of the ten is a cop.

So far, so Agatha Christie.

But I?m jumping ahead of myself. Let me introduce you to our characters:

1. The motel owner. Pure white trash, rather unwashed, staring eyes and a ?don?t go in fer that book readin? stuff? vocabulary.

2. An egotistical TV actress with a career going fast down the tubes

3. The actresses chauffeur, a former cop

4. A family on vacation ? mother, father and son. When the car gets a flat tyre, the mother steps out into the road and is hit by the aforementioned chauffeur.

5. A twentysomething prostitute who is giving up the game to go and grow oranges in Florida. It is her discarded stiletto that causes the flat tyre that causes the accident above.

6. A pair of newly-weds ? the bride pregnant - returning from their Vegas wedding

7. A cop, driving a handcuffed convicted triple murderer across the state

A seemingly unconnected group of people who have never met before, but who we know must have something in common.

While this motley crew become violently depleted and the survivors try to figure out who?s doing it, we move elsewhere to an office where a multiple murderer, Malcolm Rivers, is being interviewed by his psychiatrist. We learn that Rivers is due to attend an appeal hearing to plead against the death penalty. His psych
iatrist intends to get him off the hook on the grounds that he is completely insane.

So we have two mysteries to fathom out. First, who is killing the occupants of the lonely motel, and second, what has all this to do with Malcolm Rivers?

I, of course, am not going to tell you.

What I will tell you is that Identity is a fast-paced, grisly movie. Director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) piles on the tension with lashing wind and rain, eerie darkness, gruesome detail, short scenes and murder after murder after murder.

Each murder is quite preposterous and takes place much too quickly to have really happened, or in places where it would have been seen by at least someone. The murderer is far too fleet of foot and swift of knife/axe/rope to be believable.

We also have many scenes of people going off on their own into the darkness, despite vowing to all stick together in the light of what is happening to them. And we have our characters screaming their heads off one minute, then acting as if it?s just a normal day the next.

So far, so cheap teen slasher movie.

The risible, derivative script is ably hammed up by a cast of unknowns and two big names ? John Cusack and Ray Liotta ? who do deserve praise for managing to keep a straight face throughout.

But back to our psychiatrist and his patient. Do we get to find the connection?

Yes, we do. And it is the most absurd connection imaginable. Not only is it absurd, but anyone with any psychiatric knowledge or work experience fill find it to be a sensationalist, grossly oversimplified and downright insulting portrait of mental illness that could undo 100 years of serious research and replace it with dangerous hokum in the minds of the general public who are unfortunate enough to watch this dross.

When I read the blurb on the back of the DVD box, I expected Identity to be a genuinely tense thriller and a fascinating examination of the huma
n psyche. Or at least a nail-biter in the best Hitchcockian or Christie tradition.

What I got was one of the most formulaic, ill-informed, risibly scripted, hammily acted and completely unbelievable pieces of total nonsense I have ever had the misfortune to sit through.

Certificate: 15
Running Time: A mercifully short 90 minutes

Not recommended. Unless you like the idea of every teen slasher cliche mixed in with some very sub-standard Hitchcock and Christie formulas, swirled with a good dose of cod psychology and topped off with enough ham to keep Pizza Hut in business for a week.

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