Identity (2003)
The trailer was dread-filled; the film, however, is simply dreadful. This soggy train wreck is bad in so many ways that I don't know where to begin bitching. Should I rant about the poor acting? How about the cardboard characterization, wherein everyone gets one personality trait maximum? Or maybe the dull, cliched misdirection of the first hour, which feels like the lamest Agatha Christie knockoff ever written (call it Ten Little Idiots). No matter where I begin, though, I'll eventually have to touch on the soon-to-be-infamous midfilm twist -- in which the film develops from a boring high-class slasher flick into something much, much worse. Suffice to say that the title means more than you think it does, and in exactly the way I had hoped it didn't. This kind of shit is what happens when screenwriters think that they are clever fellows indeed and that they can out-McQuarrie Christopher McQuarrie. It's not too often that a film whips out its genitals and waves them at the audience in such a brazen and blatant manner, but that's exactly what happens here when the film decides to pull the rug out from under the plot in one of the most retarded ways I've ever seen on the big screen. Not content to be a mere stalk-and-slash affair, the film leaps headlong into the void of dimestore psychology; consequently, the last act of this film is essentially one giant bad laugh. (Seriously -- there's elements of the climax that made me nostalgic for the relative sanity and coherence of Dreamcatcher.) And even then, the filmmakers don't know when to stop raping this corpse: The final stinger takes what could have been a lousy but admirably ambitious attempt at examining deviant psychology, bleaches all the interesting stuff out of it and reveals this monstrosity for what it truly is... a transparent and contemptible piece of worthless shit that exists only to fleece a bunch of people out of their nine bucks on opening weekend. There is no reason for this film to exist. It has no deeper meaning, no good thrills, no harrowing sequences, nothing but a lot of rain, some wet actors and a screenplay that wouldn't be worth wiping a bear's ass with. If I ever meet James Mangold, I'm punching him square in the nose for this.
Grade: F
The trailer was dread-filled; the film, however, is simply dreadful. This soggy train wreck is bad in so many ways that I don't know where to begin bitching. Should I rant about the poor acting? How about the cardboard characterization, wherein everyone gets one personality trait maximum? Or maybe the dull, cliched misdirection of the first hour, which feels like the lamest Agatha Christie knockoff ever written (call it Ten Little Idiots). No matter where I begin, though, I'll eventually have to touch on the soon-to-be-infamous midfilm twist -- in which the film develops from a boring high-class slasher flick into something much, much worse. Suffice to say that the title means more than you think it does, and in exactly the way I had hoped it didn't. This kind of shit is what happens when screenwriters think that they are clever fellows indeed and that they can out-McQuarrie Christopher McQuarrie. It's not too often that a film whips out its genitals and waves them at the audience in such a brazen and blatant manner, but that's exactly what happens here when the film decides to pull the rug out from under the plot in one of the most retarded ways I've ever seen on the big screen. Not content to be a mere stalk-and-slash affair, the film leaps headlong into the void of dimestore psychology; consequently, the last act of this film is essentially one giant bad laugh. (Seriously -- there's elements of the climax that made me nostalgic for the relative sanity and coherence of Dreamcatcher.) And even then, the filmmakers don't know when to stop raping this corpse: The final stinger takes what could have been a lousy but admirably ambitious attempt at examining deviant psychology, bleaches all the interesting stuff out of it and reveals this monstrosity for what it truly is... a transparent and contemptible piece of worthless shit that exists only to fleece a bunch of people out of their nine bucks on opening weekend. There is no reason for this film to exist. It has no deeper meaning, no good thrills, no harrowing sequences, nothing but a lot of rain, some wet actors and a screenplay that wouldn't be worth wiping a bear's ass with. If I ever meet James Mangold, I'm punching him square in the nose for this.
Grade: F
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