Identity

-Columbia/Tristar (2003)

Summary

A group of strangers are lead by fate to a motel in the middle of nowhere, and then find themselves in a race against time to find the killer amongst them.

My Thoughts

Wow, this film is really something. Since Identity is so wrapped up in clues that all lead to a huge payoff at the end, I’m really not going to get into details about plot in this review. What I will say is that the film is set up brilliantly that even though there are enough clues to guess the ending, I don’t think a lot of people will be able to. Before watching Identity I had a bet with a friend of mine who said I couldn’t figure out what exactly the ending was before it happened. Since I’m pretty good at detective work, which I owe entirely to my father and his obsession with detective shows, movies, and old time radio, I took the bet. Unfortunately, I only guessed one half of the equation. My problem with guessing the ending was that when I figured out who the killer was, I couldn’t see it as all that plausible. The trick is that there is an extra leap that should take about anyone for surprise.

The greatest thing about Identity is cast and the chemistry between them. Usually, I don’t care who is in a film as long as they’re good, but the cast in this film is notable for being excellent on all levels. John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Rebecca De Mornay, and the greatly under appreciated Jake Busey are but a few of the fantastic talent pool. Poor Jake Busey, I can’t imagine being the son of the incredibly weird, but highly entertaining Gary Busey.

The script is amazing, and there’s plenty of smart dialogue throughout. There are a few moments when the film borders a little close to camp, like the finding of a head in a clothes drier, but these are few and far between.

Identity is a true edge-of-your-seat thriller. The story is told in a fairly linear manner, with a series of flashbacks peppered throughout to give some background stories. If you watch the film close enough everything is there to provide an answer before the ending of the film, but you have to be pretty attentive.  

The only disappointment I had with this film was that I thought it would be a lot scarier than it was. It is very exciting, but I never really got the creepy feeling from it that the trailers made it seem to have. I was thinking the film would have a more The Ring type of quality to it, but perhaps this is just me and I won’t take away any points for not being scary enough.

All in all this is a great film and well worth a watch and it warrants watching the film at least one more time in order to see everything that was missed the first time.

Extras

There aren’t a whole lot of extra features, but what is on this disc is quality stuff.

A couple of cool things about this edition that I’ve seen on a few other DVD titles is the choice of watching the film in widescreen or full screen as you start it up. This helps eliminate the complaints of those retarded people that live among us that can’t stand widescreen films because they don’t get the whole picture (duh!). You also get to choose if you want to watch the extended cut or theatrical release right after that.

There’s a Starz channel behind the scenes documentary that gives all the usual behind the scenes info with the cast and crew of the film. I didn’t find it that highly entertaining or interesting, because it’s more or less a promotional making-of than anything else that didn’t offer anything in the way of unique facts about the film.

The deleted scenes in the extended edition are presented individually as well as in the extended version. The scenes aren’t spectacular by any means, but they are interesting and add a little humor to the film in a couple of instances. There’s also directory commentary for each of these scenes, but it isn’t all that insightful since most of the scenes were cut to keep the pace or tone of the film intact.

This DVD makes use of the old faithful DVD filler known as filmographies. These should be banned from DVDs unless a little effort is put into them. It's cool to see that the screenwriter is included in the filmographies section, being more writer-orientated myself. What’s incredibly weird is that this same guy, Michael Coony, not only wrote Jack Frost, but its sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Killer Mutant Snowman.

The director’s commentary is interesting and focuses more on the technical aspects and the plot instead of useless trivia. It’s a pretty good watch if you’re into filmmaking or are interested in the intricacies of plot.

Score:

Film: 8.0

Extras: 7.0

Edition: 7.5

-Paul