Identity Movie Review: Trisha And Tovino Thomas’ Thriller Is Engaging But Wants To Be Many Things At Once


Last Updated:

Director-writer duo Akhil Paul and Anas Khan pack a lot into Identity. While individually, each idea is left unexplored, the film overall is a gripping watch.

The film is a thriller.

The film is a thriller.

IdentityU/A

3/5

3 January 2025|MalayalamCrime Thriller

Starring: Tovino Thomas, Trisha, Vinay Director: Akhil Paul and Anas Khan

Watch Trailer

Identity sets off as a film about Haran Shankar (Tovino Thomas), a boy with an abusive father, who turns him into a perfectionist with obsessive-compulsive disorder. As we expect the film to be about this eccentric personality solving cases, we are thrown into a story of a serial rapist, who blackmails his victims with videos of the crimes. When we think it is going to be about nabbing this criminal, he gets killed by an unknown person (we instantly know who it is). Alisha (Trisha), the witness of the crime, gets a peculiar disease called Prosopagnosia aka face blindness, due to an accident right after witnessing the murder, which renders her incapable of recognising faces.

Now, we settle for a concept film about this person with face blindness trying to identify the killer with the help of Haran, who also happens to be a good sketch artist (thanks to his mom). But no. Identity is neither that. It keeps turning into a different film every 20 minutes. You have a gripping flight sequence where Haran tries to stop a collision. Later, we also get an enjoyable Bondish fight sequence in a private jet. Clearly, Identity has an identity crisis.

There are many great ideas in Identity. Each of the different storylines can be a film in itself. The entire climax portion of Haran trying to identify an unknown assassin in the plane can be made into a full-length feature film. The writing of Akhil Paul and Anas Khan, who are also the directors, is concise and achieves a lot in a short period. Likewise, Alisha’s character arc in itself makes up for a movie. The idea of a person with face blindness identifying a killer is instantly engrossing. Instead, Alisha is reduced to a supporting role, who just becomes a tool despite the potential. All these ideas are not explored in ways they could have been. Instead, the director uses them to keep moving the story forward, which is great for the whole film but unfair to the ideas.

The overload of too many ideas also makes things contrived. We have Haran with an obsessive-compulsive disorder condition. We then have Alisha. We also have another character pulling a ruse. There are too many miracles and coincidences going on in Identity. All the major characters concerning a murder keep ending up in the same places, which is another major contrivance that sticks out hindering the entertainment.

Yet, the filmmakers hide such shortcomings using a trick: withholding information. With clever screenplay and gimmicky editing choices, the makers leave us pondering about ‘why’ something is happening so that we overlook the cliches. For instance, we only know Alisha is a witness, but are not told what she was doing there. We see Haran has a secret chamber in his house, but we don’t know why. When things eventually get unravelled Identity does end up being an entertaining film, but a contrived one at that. However, when filmmakers are hellbent on explaining things with lazy expositions, it is commendable that Akhil Paul and Anas Khan respect the audience and expect them to understand even when things are a bit obscure.

Identity is not without its flaws, but the engaging screenplay, the fruitful performances of Tovino Thomas and Vinay and the twists (though contrived), keep one invested in its universe. It is safe to say the makers have come up with an interesting character with Tovino’s Haran. There’s no lead to a sequel here, but compared to the array of unwarranted second parts, it would be interesting to see Haran on another mission of solving crimes.

News movies Identity Movie Review: Trisha And Tovino Thomas’ Thriller Is Engaging But Wants To Be Many Things At Once



Source link

Leave a Comment