IDENTITY

The Wikipedia summary makes clear that this is a polarising film - either you think it's a clever homage to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None', or it's a ludicrous rip-off.  

There was only one way for me to to find out where I sat on this spectrum.

Over the opening credits we learn that Malcolm is a convicted mass murderer who is about to be executed, and we meet Dr Mallick (Alfred Molina), his psychiatrist.

We also learn that because of some last-minute new evidence, an emergency hearing has been arranged in the middle of the night, for the judge in the case to decide whether to stay Malcolm's execution.

After this preliminary scene-setting we then switch to an isolated motel where ten characters take shelter from a torrential downpour which has rendered many local roads impassable.  

Then one by one they start to get murdered.  

Here I had a minor niggle: together with the dodgy motel manager we have eleven potential victims rather than the ten in the Christie novel.  Why the difference?  Is it because one of the group is a small boy, Timmy, who therefore doesn't count?

Anyway, leaving that to one side, the motley bunch washed up at the motel initially suspect the convicted mass murderer who happens to be in their midst.  Predictably that theory gets thrown out when said convict is himself murdered.

Whilst the dead bodies are piling up, the main protagonist is Ed (John Cusack) an ex-police officer who is trying to take sensible measures to protect them and to uncover the real culprit. Not helping him as much as one would expect is police officer Rhodes (Ray Liotta).

At the point where the murders start to escalate, and things take a surreal turn when all the dead bodies disappear, we get the major reveal as to what is really happening.

It turns out that nothing we've seen at the motel is real, it's just something going on in Malcolm's head, at the hearing.  He has a very bad case of multiple personality disorder, because he has eleven personalities, and somehow Dr Mallick has managed for the first time to get all of them together to confront each other.  

Mallick's cunning plan is that since only one personality will survive, which will not be the one responsible for the murders Malcolm committed, the judge will be persuaded that Malcolm is not responsible for the murders and therefore should not be executed.

It's a bonkers that has at least one major flaw in it, but let's run with it for the moment.  

The personality of Ed, having briefly left the motel to go to the hearing and learn all the above, returns to the motel.  There he dies but not before killing Rhodes, who turns out not to be a police officer, and who appears to be Malcolm's murderous personality.

That leaves only nice, friendly Paris to occupy Malcolm's body; so that the judge stays Malcolm's execution, and places him in Dr Mallick's care, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Well, no.  Surprise, surprise, little Timmy is the real murderer, and the film ends with him turning up to 'kill' Paris, take over Malcolm, and kill Dr Mallick.

So the fatal flaw in Mallick's plan, obviously, is that there is no guarantee that the murderous personality won't be the one to win out; in fact it seems quite likely it will (murder being what it is good at, when all is said and done).

The film has two other big problems.

Firstly, towards the end, the defence lawyer triumphantly tells the judge that they have witnessed the destruction of ten personalities, but of course those present at the hearing have done no such thing.  They've simply been staring at Malcolm whilst he presumably mutters incoherently.  Under these circumstances there is no way the judge is going to go along with all this multiple personality mumbo-jumbo.

Secondly, whereas in the Christie novel she comes up with a clever way of fooling us into thinking the real murderer is dead, here no effort is made to do the same.  Timmy just happens to disappear at the time when all the dead bodies disappear, and we are meant to not notice this.  Besides, even if a personality is 'killed' what's to stop it coming back later?

The reveal of Timmy being the real murderer is not that surprising given that he is one of the creepiest kids imaginable.

And the reveal that the convicted murderer at the motel is not Malcolm is also underwhelming because during the opening credits we get to see photos of Malcolm.

I also felt that whilst the scenes at the motel include quite a lot of screaming and running around hither and thither, they are a bit lacking in the suspense department.

So neither the murder mystery in the motel, nor the parallel story of Malcolm's hearing, are as clever or as compelling as they need to be to make this thing fly.  For this the blame sits squarely with the director James Mangold and the screenwriter Michael Cooney.