Identity

"In the end, life is a private act . . . we do not know what another man feels when he thinks his thoughts. We see what we see, hear what we hear, read what we read, and are puzzled by the rest." --Lola Scobey

Darkness and hard rain, headlights: a car carrying a family of three travels along a stretch of highway in the Nevada desert during a torrential rainstorm. One of the front tires blows out. While the father (John C. McGinley) struggles to change the tire in the downpour, his wife is struck and gravely injured by a passing limousine. Ignoring the protestations of the limo’s passenger (Rebecca De Mornay), a fading movie star fleeing the set of her latest film, the limo driver (John Cusack)—an ex-cop whose reads Sartre—drives them all to a nearby motel to call for help, but the phone lines are down . . .the roads are washed out in both directions.

Other guests arrive seeking shelter from the storm—a prostitute (Amanda Peet) leaving Las Vegas with a suitcase full of cash, another cop (Ray Liotta), transporting a convicted murder (Jake Busey) in leg irons, and young newlywed couple (Clea DuVall and William Lee Scott)—ten guests in all. The motel manager (John Hawkes) gives them all rooms—numbered, of course, from 1 to 10. Anyone who’s read a traditional English detective novel (the obvious touchstone is Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”) will be familiar enough with this kind of murder mystery set-up. Sure enough, the guests begin dying, and the killer. One of them must be the murderer—or maybe it's the motel clerk.

Meanwhile, the shadowy events taking place at the motel are intercut with an 11th-hour clemency hearing for a mass murderer (Pruitt Taylor Vince) sentenced to receive a death sentence at midnight. A crucial piece of evidence (which may have been intentionally suppressed by the prosecution) has been discovered, and the killer’s psychiatrist (Alfred Molina) believes it to be sufficient to proove insanity. The judge who sat on the case is less than pleased with having been awakened at the last minute to perhaps overturn the sentence.

How these two stories intersect is not revealed until the end. Meanwhile, the crimes being committed at the motel, and the efforts of Cusack’s and Liotta’s character to stop them, hold our attention. Busey’s character, the convicted killer, has escaped being chained to a toilet, and thereby is the most likely suspect, but as the story reveals itself, it’s clear that each of the guests has secrets all their own.

“Identity” has a terrific ensemble cast—the performances given by Cusack, Liotta, and Peet, and that by Vince in a small but crucial role, are all excellent, and director James Mangold, who directed two underappreciated films, “Heavy” and “CopLand” before becoming mired in Hollywood studio sludge in the at the end of the ‘90s, emerges here as a true talent behind the camera.

The basic conventions of the movie thriller genre have by now been used in hundreds of films, maybe thousands. The best modern thrillers are the ones that turn these conventions on their head. Because it knows what we’re thinking, “Indentity” effectively uses our pre-programmed expectations against us. Because we think we’ve seen it all before, we think we know what we’re seeing . . . and then it’s too late. “Identity” is the most effective thriller I’ve seen in a long time, and if you like movies like “The Usual Suspects” and “Momento,” you’ll definitely want to see this one.

Matt Parks (May 3, 2003)