MOVIE REVIEW : ‘False Identity’ a Film Pretender, Despite Star Cast

Video Express is the catch phrase trade papers use to describe movies jammed into theaters en route to the video bins. “False Identity” (at the Westside Pavilion) is on the express. What is this movie doing in a theater? For that matter, what is it doing on video?

Genevieve Bujold and Stacy Keach, excellent actors both, have somehow gotten trapped here. Keach is a confused ex-convict who staggers out of jail after 17 years and, despite amnesia, wanders back to a small city where broad hints are dropped that he is actually the local golden boy Harlan Errickson, long presumed dead. Bujold plays a radio deejay named “Coyote.” By a wild coincidence she locates Errickson’s old Purple Heart at a flea market and starts investigating his past, simultaneously with his return.

Skeletons tumble out of closets. Rustic old lawman pontificate. Hysterical women yowl. Harlan’s brother lurks around with his retinue of psychopaths. Every once in a while, Harlan and Coyote stare at each other, mutter deep thoughts about the nature of identity and ruminate while riding on motorbikes. Soon people are getting burned, killed, stabbed and stomped.

This is a movie with an identity problem of its own. The script would have us believe, among many other absurdities, that a savvy radio person would go on the air with a series on a man about whom she knows nothing and still keep an entire town spellbound for a week. Occasionally the actors, usually Bujold, figure out novel ways to say their preposterous lines: They stare blankly into space, scream hysterically or do a lot of twitching and eye-fakes. Veronica Cartwright reprises her flip-out bit, and Tobin Bell, as Marshal, creates an amusing lizard-eyed Richard Widmark-John Davis Chandler-style albino rat of a villain.

It’s all in vain. Stacy Keach’s brother, James, has directed “False Identity” (rated R, for sex and violence) without a trace of a visual style; even the car chases are incoherent. James Keach’s presence explains Stacy’s involvement, but what attracted Bujold, beyond friendship or a chance to repeat her “Choose Me” gig? What attracted James Keach? Should anyone, even with severe identity problems, care?