Day 42/44 - Identity (2003) - extended cut

The film begins with a patient quoting on tape a poem he says he made up as a child, “Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away.” [This first part of a longer poem by Hughes Mearns.] In a well paced opening montage, the director gives us the background on a major character of the film, mass murderer Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince), who the psychiatrist Alfred Molina is trying to save in a last minute appeal to the Nevada state commission.

The set up appears to be an homage to Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians formula (which is referenced in the film): in a blinding thunderstorm which has washed out all roads, ten people end up in a isolated Nevada motel. There is no escape to anywhere else. The motel is wonderfully creepy and suspenseful, filled with 10 connected rooms, an Indian burial ground, a deserted restaurant, and other outbuildings. As people begin to die—murdered by an unknown person--the surviving characters begin to ask why these specific ten have been brought together? One of the ten is a prisoner brought in by a cop. Is he the murderer or is someone more “innocent” guilty? Is it significant that they are all the same astrological sign? [I kept hearing Laymont Cranstan, "What evil lurks in the hearts of men?"]

While we try to make connections with the clues we are given, we begin to assume the person they are waiting for at the murderer's hearing is someone at the motel. The psychiatrist says he wants to prove that his client’s body might have committed murders, but that his mind didn’t do it.

The best thing about this thriller is the way the plot twists. I thought I had it figured out and then the writer Michael Cooney just kept taking me somewhere else.

As each of the ten in the motel dies, we begin seeing that each has a secret that makes him or her guilty, and we begin rooting for which will survive. About two-thirds of the way in the film though, writer Cooney pulls the rug out from under us (think the kind of thing Hitchcock did to viewers with Psycho) and what we think is happening suddenly may not be. For example, after the first five die, bodies begin to disappear along with any evidence of mayhem . What’s going on here? Well, the director James Mangold keeps us along for the ride and gives a satisfying and surprise ending.

I always like the work of John Cusack and Ray Liotta and they give their usual strong performances. Amanda Peet as a hooker who just wants to buy an orange grove in Florida and John Hawkes’ Larry who runs the motel are also memorable. If you like thrillers, you will like the ride and the exercise of just figuring out exactly what’s happening.

[Note: I’m assuming the extended cut, no pun intended, is just more violent and bloody than the original release.]

Identity (2003) ****