Identity is the cinematic equivalent of an 'airport novel'. It even has a neatly staged suspense moment inside an airport and a mid-air stunt. You can tell its two directors, Akhil Paul and Anas Khan, who debuted with the Tovino Thomas-starrer Forensic , put a lot of effort into making a film that badly wants to look and feel like an international thriller.
And to an extent, it does. You can tell Akhil and Anas love incorporating details of their research into their script. They love to load their screenplay with plenty of information and dispense it in as many places as possible.
And this is not made-up stuff. For example, when Tovino tells us in one scene that a certain character is behaving this way for that reason, he actually takes out his phone and shows us a similar incident that happened in the past. Or like a scene that shows us someone losing data stored on their drive due to a scientific reason.
We know this can be possible. However, we cannot shake off the nagging feeling the film is overstuffed with details. There are long scenes of exposition where characters stand around each other and behave as though they are acting in a Hollywood film.
This approach begins to feel grating after a certain point because everything looks and feels so mechanical. Perhaps this is a clever writing choice to prevent these characters from being easily accessible or predictable. Take Tovino's character, Haran Shankar, a methodical man with a stickler for order and tidiness.
He works .
