Identity

The lawyer of Malcolm Rivers makes one last ditch effort to stay the execution of his client. Rivers, convicted of murdering six people a few years back is brought to a middle-of-the-night hearing, where the lawyer and a psychiatrist try to prove that he was not aware of what he was doing because of his multiple personality disorder.

The many people in Rivers' head all end up in a motel in the pouring rain that keeps them from getting where they want to go. The group is as random as can be, including a family with small child, a prostitute, an actress, a couple of criminals, a former cop...

What happens in the court hearing and is played out by the character in the motel is that the one personality that made Rivers kill has to be irradicated. To achieve this one by one the people at the motel get killed off until the sitting judge is convinced that the culprit is gone.

The real story in the film is what is going on at the motel. The characters don't seem to be aware of what they actually are in the bigger picture, so this plays out as a quite brutal whodunit. Each person that dies gets marked with a room key, counting the bodies down from 10 to 1. They all hurl accusations and cannot seem to find any common ground on how to handle their situtation. Halfway throught the killings, one of the most level-headed of the group, Ed, turns out to be the personality that the committee around Rivers can work with.

This is when the two stories overlap, Ed suddenly finds himself strapped to a chair a not recognizing himself in the mirror. He is confused as to how he is no longer in the pouring rain by the motel. But this really turns out to be the way in. When all but one of the characters at the motel are gone, the committee is satisfied with their progress and Rivers' death sentence is overturned.

However, on the way back to the prison the psychiatrist realizes to late that one of the personalities believed to have died in an explosion acutally survived and that was the very one they would have needed to eliminate. Deadly mistake.

Despite the flaws and the confusing set up I really, really enjoy this film.

8/10

Gulliver's Travels

This film had me worried that Jack Black might go the way of Adam Sandler - appearing in films of constantly declining quality. He seems to have found his footing again (recently starring in the promising looking Bernie, which I will report on as soon as I have seen it), but Gulliver's Travels was one of his low points.

It starts off with Gulliver, who works in the mail room of a newspaper in NYC and is in love with the travel writer Darcy, handing in a sample of his 'writing'. Of course, he copied everything out of various guide books and websites. Anyway, he gets immediately sent off to a three week boat trip to Bermuda. And I mean immediately.

The infamous Bermuda Triangle takes you straight to Lilliput, apparently. There, being bigger than anyone else and coming from a (at least technically) more advanced society, he tells tall tales and beats off the villainous armada that repeatedly tries to kidnap the princess to become a lauded hero. He proceeds to behave like a giant tool and recreates time square plastered with billboards of himself (among other ridiculous, non-funny feats).

Of course, the guy the princess is supposed to marry does not buy a word Gulliver says (there is always that one non-believer in a comedy, isn't there). He goes over to the dark side and ends up blowing Gulliver's web of lies. Subsequently he gets shipped off to some mysterious, scary place, where he himself is suddenly the small person.

When Darcy - pissed off at having to do the Bermuda assignment herself now, despite her seasickness - is captured by the evil forces now running Lilliput, Gulliver's only friend comes to get him back and together they save kind and country.

Lame and painfully void of humor, which is doubly shameful as a shitload of money obviously went into this project.

<sad-headshake>

2/10