On I List of Movie Reviews
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Identity (2003)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
9/21
9/21:
I was thinking of either '7' or '8' after watching 90% of Identity, but the final 10% sealed my decision to rate it a '6'.
The correct genre placement of the film had been confusing at times: a suspenseful thriller or a slasher flick.
Ultimately, it's a dream movie which is annoying, and I hate them in general. Hence, whatever happened hasn't happened because,
you see, it's all in the mind and anything goes. The ending is stupid as if it's the ninth part of
Children of the Corn.
Although Identity has a lot of twists for the sake of twists, I'll say I was entertained much of the time
and knew it was a variation of And Then There Were None with a bit of
Bates Motel thrown in. The
cast turns in believable performances, but John Cusack and Ray Liotta come across as the most polished, seasoned
actors. It's interesting to see both in the same film.
My problem with the whole thing is, which is the most cliché thing to do, characters going their separate ways when sticking
together all the time will increase their probability of survival. The editing is bad at the beginning with several
stalled moments which are ineffective as compared to Goodfellas. I thought at first my DVD
player broke down, but it wasn't the case.
Larry said the probability of ten people having the same non-leap year birthday on May 10 is one in 10 trillion. It's a high
number, but the actual answer is 1/36510 which is one in 42 septillion, a difference of twelve digits. In
other words, it's equivalent to impossible. The trivia section of IMDb says, "About 1 in 115 sextillion," but it's somewhat
incorrect because if you multiply 1/36510 by 365, it's under the assumption the shared birthday can be any
day of the year, but we already know for a fact that it's May 10.
All in all, the filmmakers might want to rethink the last twenty minutes of Identity to get rid of the
"dream" label; otherwise, everything that happened isn't real, and it's therefore a waste of time.