"Identity"

In James Mangold's brain-teasing, heart-stopping thriller -- think "The Usual Suspects" or "Memento" -- everybody in a lonely motel's got a secret. And someone's trying to kill them all.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Apr 25, 2003 | It was a dark and stormy night -- suddenly a shot rang out! That scenario occurs repeatedly in "Identity," and you can add the following ingredients: A lonely motel in the middle of the Nevada desert where the phone lines are down; an escaped homicidal maniac; a motel clerk who may be an impostor; a haunted ex-cop turned limo driver; a drug-addled fading movie star; a hooker with a heart of gold (and a suitcase full of cash); a couple who've been married for nine hours; an ancient tribal burial ground; and a troubled family with a little kid who never speaks. This thriller from director James Mangold ("Cop Land," "Girl, Interrupted") and writer Michael Cooney is so ingeniously constructed that these meta-noir ingredients feel dizzyingly enjoyable, never hackneyed. In fact, the overheated melodrama of "Identity" is crucial to its method -- and the key, in some ways, to its narrative secrets.

Don't worry, I won't give anything serious away. If you're a thriller fan, you put up with so much condescending crap at the movies that you deserve to experience the swoops and switchbacks of this rollercoaster ride without knowing any major clues in advance. "Identity" is the only movie of the last few years to deserve comparison with "The Usual Suspects" or "Memento"; it's a wicked scorpion with a double sting in its tail. When you look back on it, you'll realize the filmmakers gave you all the clues you needed to understand why the guests at that Nevada motel start to die one after the other, in sinister, inexplicable fashion. You'll go over the plot again and again, trying to figure out if it all holds up. (I'm still not sure.) But while you're watching, there's no way you'll figure it all out. (You'll have a theory partway through, but it won't be right.)

Mangold's directing career has been uneven to this point, but with this mind-game puzzler he may have found his instrument. He takes one of the hoariest devices of thrillerdom, the mixed-up chronology -- showing us the consequences of an act before we see the act itself, or scrambling the sequence of a chain of coincidences -- and makes it crackle with energy. So we see George (John C. McGinley) stumble into that lonely motel with his grievously injured wife Alice (Leila Kenzle) before we see Alice run down on the road by distracted limo driver Ed (John Cusack), who's being henpecked by the fading starlet (Rebecca De Mornay) in the back of his car. We also don't know yet that George and Alice got a flat tire when their minivan ran over a high-heeled sandal that flew out of the convertible driven by Paris (Amanda Peet), who's abandoning the fast life of Las Vegas for an orange grove back home in Florida, and has an awful lot of money with her.

Whew! At this point we're maybe 10 percent of the way through the story. Both ends of this remote Nevada valley are flooded out, so people keep showing up at the motel. They've all got secrets, some obvious, some not. Lou (William Lee Scott) and Ginny (Clea DuVall) are the high-strung newlyweds who don't know each other as well as they think. Rhodes (Ray Liotta) is a cool and collected corrections officer, who's transporting a swaggering, smirking convicted killer (Jake Busey) to Carson City. Then there's motel clerk Larry (John Hawkes), who seems to have an extensive collection of hunting knives and pornography. And George and Alice's creepy little kid, who never says anything.

Next Page: Cusack is clearly the star here

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