Identity Review

Director James Mangold's follow up to his romantic comedy 'Kate & Leopold' couldn't be any more different. A dark, sophisticated and murky tale, 'Identity' kicks off when the lives of John Cusack's limo driver and Rebecca De Mornay's 80s TV star literally collide with those of a call girl, a pair of newlyweds, a family in crisis and Ray Liotta's cop who is transporting a killer. As they take shelter from a savage rainstorm in a desolate motel, the ten strangers realise their nightmare has only just begun as each of them start to die, one by one.

Exploding on to the screen with a fantastically pacy opening, the movie breathtakingly conveys the characters' back-stories and the spooky location of the motel. And the magnificent ensemble cast - well led by the ever-dependent Cusack and Liotta - brilliantly draws the audience into their plight as more and more bodies pile up. But what is really striking about the movie is the director's ease at playing with the expectations of the rapt audience. At once a whodunit, a horror and a psychological thriller, by the end of the film, the one thing the audience is left in no doubt about is that 'Identity's' a movie straight out of the top drawer complete with a big twist.