Average murder mystery, I guessed two thirds of the ending...

Rating: 5/10 (10 January 2008)

Identity is set in Nevada late one night during a fierce rainstorm & starts as limo driver Edward Dakota (John Cusack) is driving actress Paris Nevada (Amada Peet) across a remote desert valley, suddenly he runs into a woman named Alice York (Leila Kenzle) who was standing in the highway after her car got a flat tyre. Together with her husband George (John C. McGinley) & young son Timmy (Bret Loehr) they stop at an isolated motel to get some help, there they quickly realise all the roads are flooded & the telephone lines are down & that they will have to wait it out until the morning. Various other assorted people turn up from police officer's to a couple who were recently married, soon after the decapitated head of Paris is found & it becomes clear there is a murderer amongst their number as the dead bodies start to pile up at an alarming rate...
Directed by James Mangold Identity is for the first seventy odd minutes an Agatha Christie style whodunit as various character's are killed off under mysterious circumstances in some sort of isolated location, it has the intrigue, the mystery, the red herrings & story traits one expects from a typical whodunit. I love murder mystery whodunit's, I really do from the likes of classic telly detective show's like Quincy (1977 - 1983) to Columbo (1971 - 2000) to Midsomer Murders & straight out-and-out horror film whodunit's like Scream (1996) & I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) as well as dozens of imitator's, I have spent many an hour in front of my telly trying to work out who did it, why they did it & how they did it. I don't usually get it right but I usually do have fun trying to figure it out. Anyway, here we have Identity, which is a mixture of horror & straight laced detective drama which when all said & done like any good whodunit stands or falls by the strength of it's twist ending which I personally don't think is that good. It starts off fine, an isolated location, a torrential thunderstorm which strands several people all of whom seem to be hiding things or have hidden agenda's, then the killings begin & it draws you in as you just instinctively want to know who is responsible. So far so good. But then about twenty minutes before it's end Identity turns it's whole story, it's whole plot, all the character's & literally everything that has happened to that point on it's head with a frustrating twist which I didn't like. I understood it but I just didn't like it. In my opinion this twist cheapens everything that has happened before, it ruins the story & makes it almost pointless. Also I have to say that I guessed who the killer was, I was sat there watching Identity & thought who would the makers feel was the least likely person to have done it & went for them & I was totally right! Not why 'they' actually did it or how 'they' did it but I guessed their identity within twenty minutes. I also anticipated the plot twist involving another character exactly which didn't help matters since apart from one huge twist I pretty much had Identity figured out. Also, was the body of the dead motel owner ever explained? The eventual killer couldn't have possibly killed him...
Director Mangold does alright, there's a decent atmosphere, there's some tension & one or two jump out of your seat scare moments as well. It's just a shame about the twist which I honestly didn't think worked, it made sense & I have no complaints there but I was just expecting more & the murder mystery side of things was too predictable for me although I'm not saying for one moment everyone who watches it will figure it out because I'm sure lots won't. There's a decapitated head in a tumble dryer but otherwise not much gore & the murders happen off screen.
With a supposed budget of about $30,000,000 which sounds a hell of a lot of money to me, I thought it was one of those low budget films which relied on some sort of extreme plot twist to gain attention but 30 big ones puts this up there as a pretty big budget Hollywood flick. There's good cast here including John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Alfred Molina, Jake Busey & Rebecca De Mornay who all put in good performances.
Identity is a good murder mystery for seventy odd minutes but then sort of collapses in a really hard to swallow twist ending which for me ruined everything that had happened before it. The killer is too obvious as well. Good & an interesting film to watch once but I doubt I'll ever want to watch it again & I certainly couldn't recommend it.