a fraud from head to toe

Rating: 2/10 (8 July 2013)

Identity is a shaggy dog movie. You have seen a few other movies of this kind. The writer and the director convince themselves that their twist is so very clever, conceptually mind-bending and original that the viewer will be bowled over by the big revelation. The most extreme and offensive form this can take -it is not the form taken in this movie- is the discovery that "it was all a dream." That is, what you were looking at for 1.5 hours never happened. Cheap and disgraceful. Identity has a tad more integrity than that, but not much more. You eventually learn that, as the New York Times reviewer put it, "the movie you were seeing is not the movie you were seeing." You are set up with what appears to be a complexly plotted thriller/whodunit/horror movie. There are a number of sharply defined characters; each has a special story to tell; it turns out that they are all related in some way. They get killed off one by one - most of them anyway. You are drawn in by the way the film is shot and cut. It's very professional, and the thing moves along very nicely - no fat, no wasted footage. You look forward to a satisfying resolution, something along the lines of the original Ten Little Indians, which is referenced by one of the characters.
Your expectations will be in vain. None of the relationships and plot developments are relevant to what you have been led to expect. The twist is a tribute to the writer-director's laziness. The movie isn't the one you thought you were watching. It wasn't all a dream, but it might as well have been. Junk on stilts. - If you must watch this movie, do not watch the trailer, which contains a major spoiler.