Identity
(Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(2003)
review by Died with Boots On

"Last night I met upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd go away!" Dr. Malick fervently jots down chicken scratch in his case study notebook for a Mr. Malcolm Rivers, whose tape-recorded voice saturates the very atmosphere with its reflections of psychological fragility.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the deserts of Las Vegas, during a torrential thunderstorm, we are treated to an entourage of daunting and mind-bending photography as the orangey-neon "Motel" sign flickers in the rain, and contrasts sharply against the deep blue hues of the nighttime shadows cast upon the cactus prairie. As a car pulls up to the seedy motel, the camera cuts to a close-up of the shoddy, offensive motel slumlord, Larry (Hawkes), enjoying miserable reception on his twelve-inch television screen, and downing a shot every time someone "buys a vowel." The climate already tense, George York ( McGinley) explodes onto the screen, drenched in rainwater and soaked in blood, his unconscious, bloodstained wife, Alice York (Kenzle), lying limply in his arms. "She won't stop bleeding," George compulsively blurted. The scene freezes, and the film flashes back to just minutes before, where we observe George York anal-retentively veering off of the road after lacerating one of his rear tires.

"It's a high-heel shoe," George howled over the rain as he removed a stiletto from his tire. The scene freezes again, and flashes back several hours to midafternoon, where we anxiously take in the sapphire-blue sky ebbing away from a sporty convertible that is speeding over the horizon. Just hours before, the convertible's attractive driver, Paris (Peet) had abandoned her smutty lifestyle as a prostitute in search of a higher standard of living. Leaning backward in the driver's seat, she struggles to unlatch her portmanteau, and spills her wardrobe all over the road. The camera focuses on a high-heeled shoe situated heel-up on the road. The scene cuts back to the first flashback, where George is repairing the tire.

Timmy York (Loehr), the York's son of no more than seven, places his hand on the window. His mother, standing right outside the car, walks forward and mirror's her son's hand through the glass. Timmy retracts his hand and the mother, hers. Stepping into the lane of oncoming traffic, she is bowled over by a speeding limousine. We then cut to a liaison between the limousine chauffeur, Ed (Cusack), and his employer, the washed-up, has-been actress, Caroline Suzanne (De Mornay). Peeling his eyes away from the road to search fruitlessly for the demanding actresses' cell phone replacement battery, we watch as Ed collides headlong with Alice York.

In the meantime, the desert valley road has been flooded in both directions, and in an unprolific attempt at escaping Mother Nature's clutch, Paris drives her car halfway through the spouting tides of the river before it dies. Limping back up onto the road, she swats her arms in the air to attract the attention of two oncoming headlights. In the car are the paranoid Ginny (DuVall), and the self-assertive, egomaniacal Lou (Scott). Everyone implicated in this grizzly butterfly effect are all checked into the most "luxurious" suites in Larry's slipshod rat's nest. Ed begins meticulous work on sewing up Mrs. York's mutilated neck, while a prison transport rolls up to the motel. The attending officer, a Mr. Rhodes (Liotta), requests permission from Larry to spend the night in a motel room, where he eventually handcuffs his prisoner, Robert Maine (Busey), to a toilet.

After much time has passed, Ed begins nosing around in search of his actress. In one of the most heart pounding sequences I've ever had the pleasure of sitting through, Ed discovers Caroline Suzanne's decapitated head in a washing machine. Along with the laundry and fleshy gray matter is the key to room ten. There is a cold-blooded psychopath among the guests, and one by one, as if part of a countdown with each preceding key found at the scene of the next successive murder, they begin dropping like flies. As the storm rages on and the dead begin to outnumber the living, one thing becomes crystal clear. They are all woven into the same bloody tapestry, all cosmically intertwined and drawn to this cockroach-infested motel by a force to be reckoned with.

Elsewhere, in a dimly lit midnight appeal hearing, lawyers line one side of a long table, and psychologists, the other, with a judge at the head. The psychologists want a stay of execution and more time to plead their case for insanity, since a new piece of evidence has shown up after being misfiled. A marble-bound copybook. The lawyers are unimpressed and not persuaded, and cross their arms until further proof is presented by the psychiatrists, who demand that the assembly wait until their client, a serial killer, has been transported to the hearing before they begin.

When these divergent scenarios play out, when the reality of the situations eventually unfold, when the two storylines gnash their teeth against each other as only "Identity" can do, the audience is left with their mouths agape. Nominated for an Academy Award for his moving drama about the life and love of Johnny Cas h – "Walk the Line" – D irector James Mangold and writer Michael Cooney have crafted a well-executed piece of cinematic beauty that is the conception of a new genre. Alan Silvestri's score is one to be remembered, and accentuates all the right sequences. The flashing back-and-forth was an excellent decision on behalf of Mangold, and establishes the movie as more of a cerebral thriller than a mindless slasher. I can't even begin to say enough about the cinematography, so I won't. However, the element of thunder, rain, and lightning in harmony with the " Hitchcockian" ambience surrounding the setting hatches the claustrophobic mood that both writer and director have snapped their spines to create. I thoroughly enjoyed this film in the theaters, and have since enjoyed it over twenty times on DVD. I would strongly recommend "Identity" to anyone.

Sliced and diced for audiences to enjoy until kingdom come, "Identity" presents the opportunity to either view the theatrical release or extended cut, while preparing a lavish feast of extras including director's commentary, writer's commentary, deleted scenes that leave anyone wondering why they didn't literally make the cut, a storyboard, trailers, and a behind the scenes look at the making-of, as captured by "Starz." I fostered a newfound respect for the actors and actresses as I watched them floundering about under what appeared to be some sort of irrigation pipeline. This chiller is served best on a rainy day, but only for the experience of that rare cinematic blur of reality and artwork as the security and comfort of the viewer's own home begins melding with the desolate Nevada floodplain in a delicious, well-paced, expertly-photographed, deadpan fondue of plot twists and plot tributaries that effectively forge a swaying pendulum within the fabric of the film.