Identity (dir. James Mangold, 2003)
I have held a grudge against Identity for fifteen years. You may think that’s unreasonable, but I disagree. That’s the only justified response you could have to watching it. Oh, sure, it received some decent reviews at the time of its release, but that didn’t matter to me then. I was right, they were wrong.
But I’m older now. If nothing else, I possess a body of knowledge and experience that can better inform my response to the film. I can contextualize it within James Mangold’s filmography and the careers of its accomplished if slumming cast. I know more about genre. I have even read the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None that the plot is riffing on. I didn’t care for it, but at least I know where all this came from.
Yes, let’s rewatch Identity.
…
Nope, it’s still shit.
Ten strangers who fulfill some very standard character types are stranded at an isolated motel on a rainy night to be picked off one by one. Away from the murder motor lodge, there is a midnight hearing for a stay of execution for a death row inmate with dissociative identity disorder when suppressed evidence comes to light. It’s not immediately clear what the connection between these two plots are, but let me tell you now: cherish the hour and ten minutes when you’re in the dark, because things will become aggressively stupid.
Our cast includes a limo driver (John Cusack), a has-been actress (Rebecca De Mornay), a sex worker running from her past (Amanda Peet), a corrections officer transporting a convicted murder (Ray Liotta and Jake Busey, respectively), the motel proprietor (John Hawkes), a newlywed couple (Clear Duvall and William Lee Scott), and a husband and wife with a young child (John C. McGinley, Leila Kinzle, and Bret Loehr).
Things are revealed to not be as they seem. Cusack isn’t simply a driver, for instance, he’s an ex-cop haunted by the things he’s seen. Hawkes is actually he’s a drifter who took assumed the identity–you see!–of the dead owner. Liotta is an escaped convict and Busey his accomplice.
But wait, there’s more. These strangers are all connected, sharing themed names and the same birthday. The motel itself is like a roadside version of the Overlook, having been built on an Indian burial ground. What is going on? Is it supernatural shenanigans, the most convoluted revenge plot orchestrated this side of Edmond Dantes, or perhaps a postmodern nightmare scenario out of Borges or early Paul Auster that suggests things beyond all understanding?
Oh, I wish. None of those would be great or anything, but they would at least have stakes. What is actually happening here invalidates everything.
IT WAS IN THE DEATH W INMATE’S MIND THE WHOLE TIME.
All of the characters at the motel are aspects of character actor Pruitt Taylor Vincent’s fractured psyche. His psychiatrist (Alfred Molina) believes that only one of Vincent’s personalities is responsible for the crimes for which he will be executed, and that it is necessary on the rest of the alternate identities–DO YOU GET IT?–to find and destroy the real killer.
None of that is how any of this works. Dissociative identity disorder does not manifest as some literal mind game playing on a deadline. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think the appeals process for capital punishment cases works remotely like it does here. Also, how in the fuck do they determine the alternate personas are dead?! AGHHHHHHHHHHH! I HATE IT SO MUCH!
October 6, 2018
oliveresque 