Filmmakers are finally getting the message that a taught,
suspense-filled thriller is better than a hack and slash gore-fest
where the body count is more important than the plot.
Filmmakers are finally getting the message that a taught, suspense-filled thriller is better than a hack and slash gore-fest where the body count is more important than the plot.
The new movie “Identity,” currently playing at Premiere Cinemas, is the kind of spine-tingling suspense that proves that theory.
There are a few bloody moments on screen, but director John Mangold (“Kate and Leopold,” “Girl Interrupted” and “Cop Land”) goes a long way to keep the on-scren bloody scenes to a minimum.
What Mangold does well in this one-hour-and- 27-minute release from Columbia Pictures is to borrow elements from a number of classic thrillers.
The opening setting itself screams of Alfred Hitchcock with 10 strangers forced to stay together at a creepy rundown roadside motel that is miles away from anywhere that resembles normal civilization. The group, traveling in a fierce and unexpected rainstorm must seek shelter at the motel after one of them is severely injured in a car accident.
But Mangold does more than just set a good scene, he makes good use of camera techniques that include a variety of long tracking scenes where the camera follows the impending victim, giving the audience that person’s point of view. He also switches back and forth providing the audience with glimpses of the killer’s viewpoint.
Once the action gets going, Mangold keeps the audience’s attention through the use of crisp editing that takes the viewer from setting to setting at a pace that gives a feeling of action and generates tension.
The film is also helped by good performances from a cast that features an odd mixture of older, more-established actors such as John Cusack (“Say Anything,” “Fat Man and Little Boy” and “Sixteen Candles”), who plays an emotionally damaged police officer who is moonlighting as a chauffeur; Ray Liotta (“Goodfellas,” “Field of Dreams” and “Hannibal”), who stars as Rhodes, a probation officer who is transporting a dangerous criminal; and an almost unrecognizable Rebecca DeMornay (“The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” “Backdraft” and “Risky Business”), who plays B-grade celebrity Caroline Suzanne on the downhill side of a rapidly declining career.
Mix them in with a nice cast of up-and-coming young stars like Amanda Peet (“Changing Lanes,” The Whole Nine Yards” and “High Crimes”), who plays Paris, a high-class call girl looking to get out of the business and start a new life.
Things get rolling when a woman is seriously injured in a car accident on a rain-soaked highway. Traveling with the woman and her second husband is the woman’s strangely silent son from her first marriage.
With no help in sight, Ed forces a newlywed couple to help. So all of them go to the motel and get rooms to wait out the storm. No sooner do the tenants start getting settled into their rooms than a mysterious killer starts knocking them off one by one. As an added twist, the killer leaves a numbered room key on or next to each of his victims. The dwindling number of cast members quickly find themselves in a race to figure out who the killer is and stop him.
During all of this murderous mayhem, Mangold starts cutting away to another scene where a psychiatrist and an attorney argue for a stay of execution for their client on the basis of newly discovered evidence.
Film editor David Brenner does a good job of blending in the two story lines without taking away from the overall tension. In thrillers, the use of that technique can often backfire by confusing the audience and muddying up an otherwise good story.
This movie features some graphic death images, including a decapitated head, as well as language that is unsuitable for children and sensitive viewers.
