If you read the pitch for James Mangold’s 2003 psychological thriller, you’d be forgiven for rolling your eyes. Ten strangers stranded at a dreary Nevada motel during a torrential downpour? A killer picking them off one by one, counting down by room keys? It sounds like the most mothballed, bargain-bin Agatha Christie homage imaginable, like And Then There Were None played on a scratched, loop-heavy cassette tape.
Except Mangold and screenwriter Michael Cooney aren’t just playing moldy oldie genre hits; they’re cranking the volume straight to eleven. Backed by a stellar, sweat-drenched ensemble featuring John Cusack as an everyman limo driver, Ray Liotta as a twitchy cop and Amanda Peet as a pragmatic sex worker fleeing Vegas, Identity starts as a slick, claustrophobic slice of neo-noir. It’s moody, rain-soaked, and drenched in atmospheric dread that makes the artificial Culver City soundstage look and feel like a purgatorial nightmare.
And if you haven’t seen it, spoilers…
About halfway through the movie, we cut to a last-minute legal hearing to stay the execution of a serial killer named Malcolm Rivers. And guess what? His journals reveal he suffers from severe dissociative identity disorder. And therefore, the isolated desert motel isn’t real. Every single character trapped inside is an alternate personality duking it out inside Malcolm’s fractured psyche, orchestrated by a psychiatric experiment designed to purge the homicidal alter.
Some critics hated it, but Roger Ebert loved the rug-pull, and he’s right. It retroactively transforms the standard slasher moments into a fascinating psychological chess match. Yet it’s so close to being ridiculous that it may shut the movie off in anger. I’m a bit in that camp myself.
The Arrow Video release of this film has a 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray™ presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of the Theatrical and Extended Cuts. There are two commentary tracks, one by director James Mangold and the other by screenwriter Michael Cooney, as well as interviews with Pruitt Taylor Vince and Cathy Konrad; behind-the-scenes; deleted scenes; storyboards; a trailer; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring two choices of original artwork; and a collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andrew Cardno and original production notes. You can get it from MVD.
