IDENTITY

It's not often that I say this, but I didn't expect what happened in this movie. I know, that's the point of the mystery/thriller genre; there's not much suspense if the viewer predicts the plot. Unfortunately, most thrillers suffer from one or two of the twin weaknesses of modern movies: Predictability and preview spoilers. Predictability is less of a problem for those who only see a few movies each year. If you watch more than a few American thrillers, you quickly realize there is a consistency to the "surprise" twists. Since a movie's success relies on keeping the viewer's interest, the truth cannot be revealed too early. Therefore, most revelations in the first two acts that appear to indicate a guilty party are merely misdirection. Also, many movies suffer from the "Butler Did It" syndrome. For example, after you've seen a dozen movies where the killer turns out to be the long-lost amnesiac sister recently escaped from a South-American convent, the next time you hear "after I regained my memory, I escaped by stealing Mother Superior's bathrobe...", you know how it will turn out (Don't worry, I'm not giving anything away; there ISN'T a long-lost amnesiact sister in this movie). Second, a phenomenon that continually amazes me, the previews for many thrillers give away enough information for an alert viewer to guess the story. I'm sure this is a difficult balance to keep; reveal enough to pique people's interest, but not show enough to give away what happens. Many previews show too much, but those for this movie did not. It captured the tone and feel of the film, without tipping its hand. (Of course, yet another problem is movie reviewers that give away too much, which I try really, really hard not to do, unless the movie is so bad that I want to save you from being exposed to it, like "Wet Hot American Summer"). So if you're in the mood for an unusual little thriller with a number of familiar faces, and you can take a bit of gory violence, check it out! If you liked the movies below, you'll probably like this one (and visa versa): Silence of the Lambs Session 9 American Psycho Fight Club Overall Rating: 6 (where 1=Worthless, 10=Fabulous) Eight-Facet Info Rating, rated on a scale of 0 (None) to 4 (Lots!)):

© 2003 Evan M. Nichols