"Ten Little Indians" meets "Psycho"...

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 2003)

Who would ever in their life guess that the writer of "Identity," a fairly clever whodunnit horror-thriller, wrote and directed "Jack Frost," the underwritten, deeply flawed (and just plain stupid) thriller about a killer snowman? Not I. But yet I suppose strange things really do happen, because "Identity" is written by Michael Cooney, who isn't nearly as looney in his writing as he was for the other films of his, which includes "Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman" (2000).
"Identity" starts out strong and ends fairly well - though the ending was a bit strange, to say the least. It is about a group of ten people who get stranded at a run-down motel during a desert rainstorm in Nevada. Unable to leave the motel, the occupants start to die off one-by-one, though they have no idea who is the killer nor why s/he is killing. Sound like "Ten Little Indians" to you? Well, it may, but the underlying premise of the film is wholly different.
The occupants include a limo driver named Ed (John Cusack), who was driving a down-on-her-luck movie star (Rebecca DeMornay) when he hit a woman in the middle of an interstate. The woman's husband (John C. MicGinley, who doesn't look a day older than he did in "Platoon") and son help their mother back to a crummy old motel run by a comical man named Larry (John Hawkes). Ed goes out to find an ambulance, but instead stumbles upon a flooded road and a hooker, Paris (Amanda Peet), who was fleeing to Florida to start her life over fresh again before the rain came.
Ed's limo gets stuck in the floodwater and two newlyweds agree to give him and Paris a ride back to the motel. All four return to the motel, defeated by the blocked roads, when a policeman (Ray Liotta) transporting a homicide convict (Jake Busey) shows up, requesting a room. Now there are ten people with completely different backgrounds, stranded in a motel. But they may have more in common than they think.
People start dying in an apparently random order. And every time someone is murdered, a room key is left behind with the dead corpse, signifying a countdown until there are only a handful of people still alive.
To spoil the end of "Identity" would be wrong, but I will say that I had guessed it before I even saw the movie. I guessed the end from the trailer. This kind of ruined some parts of the film for me, and I must say that "Identity" would have held my suspense even more so than it did if the trailer hadn't decided to give so much away.
I really enjoy whodunnits, especially clever ones. I like when a handful of people with no connection find out they may have more of a connection than they believed at first. "Clue" with Tim Curry was a film bashed by critics and audiences, but I loved it. "Identity" is in the same vein as this but it isn't as funny nor literal. It is more of a psychological-thriller-whodunnit than a plain ol' whodunnit. Fans of Agatha Christy (who wrote, if you don't already know, such famous novels as "Murder on the Orient Express") may be baffled by this film. Many people will be looking for the killer the entire time, guessing who it is, but in the last half hour the plot finally starts to unveil itself.
John Cusack gives one of the strongest performances of his career as Ed, an ex-cop who suspects there may be something going on under all this, more than meets the eye. I have a few theories about his character and some of the others, but I would have to give away the end of the movie to delve into these theories, so I will therefore resist, and just leave it with the fact that I really like Ray Liotta, but John Cusack stole the show.
The movie is directed by James Mangold, who wrote and directed 1997's "Cop Land" with Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro. He's a talented director. His inspiration to be a suspenseful director shines through here - with a bit of practice and imagination (which this film clearly has), he could become a great director.
I enjoyed "Identity," I really did. It was only 90 minutes long, for one matter, and never became repetitive. Even with knowing the ending, I was still held in suspense by the film, which makes me wonder just how suspenseful it must be to those who have no idea what the ending will be like.
My only complaint? The film switches courses a few too many times. It seems as though it doesn't always know what it wants to be. At times it is a thriller, at times it is a horror, at times it is a drama, at times it is a comedy, at times it is a psycho movie, and at times it is surreal. But there is some great talent in this movie. It is cleverly written, even if the ending seems a bit strange and an easy way out. I haven't seen an ending like this on a whodunnit before. It will surprise a lot of people. That may be standard nowadays with films like "The Sixth Sense" cruising around, but "Identity" seems - for the most part - to stay true to the classic whodunnits, and for that I give it a lot of credit. It is a very entertaining and suspenseful film.
4/5 stars -
John Ulmer