Newsnight Review discussed the movie Identity with John Cusack as a limo driver and Ray Liotta as a cop.

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

MARK KERMODE:
It's a complete piece of fluff, but it does look like the Bates motel. At the beginning we have Alfred Molina defending someone who is about to go to the electric chair on the basis of possible split personalities. We have the Agatha Christie 10 Little Indians reference, which somebody brings up foolishly. You should never name the text that you are referencing. If I have a problem, it's that the director started out as a really intelligent, low-key, underplayed director. Copland was the film that made Sylvester Stallone into a great actor which nobody thought he could be. This is silly. It's trash. It's intelligent, well-played vigorous trash, but it is trash nonetheless. Also, if you have any kind of genre awareness, if you watched the Twilight Zone, if you have a sci-fi interest, I guarantee that you will get at least one of the three major twists. It has no substance.

GERMAINE GREER:
It annoyed the hell out of me. I object to being nailed to my seat by duty ; I can't even walk out , and being obliged to watch bodies being whacked, thwacked, bust, broken, people with baseball bats shoved down their necks, and being surprised all the time. It keeps shocking you. Everything comes with a bang. Every time anyone goes outdoors, you think they are going to get jumped.

MARK LAWSON:
It is a horror movie.

GERMAINE GREER:
I don't even get horror movies. Life is pretty horrible already. If I want horror, I can tune in to CNN. There's plenty of horror there. Why do I go to the movies to see people run over?

MARK LAWSON:
It's suppose to be cathartic isn't it?

GERMAINE GREER:
Bullshit!. People think it's entertainment, funny or something.

MARK KERMODE:
It's not that it's funny. It's intellectually titillating. The more you dislike it, the more you now like it. It's a titillating, fun 90 minutes of pleasure in the cinema that doesn't mean anything. It's not really horrible.

GERMAINE GREER:
My pleasure buttons are in a different place. I get no pleasure whatever out of the immensely convincing sound of a vehicle hitting a woman's body at high speed. It doesn't turn me on. I don't get pleasure out of seeing walls smeared with the blood.

BILL BUFORD:
I have to admit, I agree with Germaine completely. I found it so manipulative and contrived. You were glued to your seat. You weren't bored, but you weren't bored because it was so contrived and manipulative. Whenever you were getting in a stressful situation, you knew it, because first you had the drums, then a bit more percussion, then a high-pitched note, and then it went quiet. Then something suddenly happened.

MARK LAWSON:
That's part of it all though isn't it? Those are the conventions. You're supposed to go with them.

BILL BUFORD:
It was so manipulative and so contrived. The camera frame would narrow down, and you thought, "Here it comes again." At the end, I felt like I had watched a very well made but finally empty music video.

MARK LAWSON:
Mark, I did think this was well made. I spotted one of the key twists in it, but even so it kept me surprised?

MARK KERMODE:
I think the problem is that, because it's directed by James Mangle, it looks bigger and serious than it is. In a way, you would feel more sympathetic towards it if it just looked like a cheap B movie, which is actually what it is.

BILL BUFORD:
It's called Identity and it's about dissociative personality. It has this intellectual conceit, saying, "Come on, take me seriously."

MARK LAWSON:
Isn't Cusack there because it does want to be taken seriously?

BILL BUFORD:
He is there because the director is one whose reputation is good enough to get those actors around him. They all then play a parlour game, a rollercoaster, and it works. The fact that there are moments with big loud bangs to make you jump, that's what you go to the cinema for.