Saw Identity last Thursday (I know, I know, it’s supposed to be the Wednesday Night Movie Club, but we were all busy as hell that night) and found it pretty entertaining, though ultimately unsatisfying.
The basic plot, which you will more or less have gathered from the trailer, goes like this: a group of strangers find themselves, by a series of weird coincidences, to be stuck in a motel during a deluge. Two of the strangers are a prisoner and the cop that’s escorting him. The prisoner inevitably escapes and people start dying.
… But wait! The plot thickens!
Unfortunately, it’s at that point that this movie starts to go downhill as well. It relies too much on its cleverness that it leaves a lot of points raw and unfinished. You can always tell when the writer is dropping you a hint because the dialogue suddenly becomes unnatural, for one thing.
I can’t help but compare it to The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense, in this respect. Suspects and Sixth Sense were superb movies on pretty much all levels, and their legendary endings made them all-time classics; TUS is one of the first movies that come to mind when you say “plot-twist ending.” What these two movies have though, is an ability to stand tall without their respective trick endings, something which is unfortunately beyond Identity’s grasp.
Granted, Identity’s gimmick was fascinating in its own right. I did figure it out about two-thirds of the way through, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating the last half of the film. It was well-made enough to at least get me through the entire 120 minutes without yawning.
My honest opinion is that if it weren’t for this movie’s one gimmick, it’d be utterly forgettable. Overall, it lacks something to really define it, to really give it … uh, identity, I guess.
… But anyway, Matrix Revolutions is showing this Wednesday so who cares if this movie wasn’t so hot, right?
