Christian E.Christiansen didn't get off to the best of starts with his first outing into English Language films with his 2011 dud The Roommate, which was simply terrible. His venture sees him head back to his homeland of Denmark hoping for a little rub of the green of recent success of Scandinavian thrillers will help his ID:A will be one we'll remember. However like the film's protagonist who suffers from memory loss, sadly it seems ID:A is missing something too....
Tuva Novotny plays a young woman who wakes up to find herself lying in a middle of a river near a small village in France with no recollection who she is or how she got here or even how she got the recent scar on her stomach. Next to her is a duffel bag containing 2 million Euros and she decides to take refuge in the villages only hotel adopting a name of Aliena but eventually, by accident, she soon discovers she maybe Danish but who are the mysterious men stalking her? In search of her true identity Aliena heads to Copenhagen and on that journey, she recognises the music another passenger is playing, the music of someone called Justin Ore. From this point slowly memories start coming back giving her clues of that past leading her on a path of tragedy and danger!
Firstly what I would do first is ignore the "From producers of Melancholia". Yes its them but if yours expecting ID:A to be some sort of arthouse thriller you will be severely disappointed as the only connection is the film's pace which makes the viewing very boring playing more like a television drama, which is ironic as most of the cast starred in The Killing! As for the action in this film what we get you'll miss if you blink but if your fortunate to recognise it, you could say it's action in its basic form, very repetitive a little droning like one of those terrible one beat techno songs 15 years love to annoy everyone with.
ID:A starts like a slow-paced psycho drama dragging along until IDA (yes she knows her true name now) finds herself being beaten to a pulp the majority of the film we watch as a flashback. As film plugs away you get that sense of something big, dramatic is going to happen so like any curious viewer you keep with the film but when the conclusion arrives you are presented with an annoying hair pulling mediocre ending. This frustrating ending leaves so many questions questions unanswered especially the biggest question why is the film called ID:A not IDA?!
Overall ID:A offers nothing new or even anything we haven't seen before in Amnesia thrillers. The film feels like an indecisive, most of all uninspiring predictable pulp that proves Christian E Christiansen is just as bad at making films in his homeland as he is in Hollywood. If you want a real good amnesia action packed thriller stick with the Bourne films at least they guarantee what they say they will provide, action and thrills!
Paul Devine |★★☆☆☆
World Cinema, Thriller | Denmark, 2011 | 15 | 2nd April 2012 (UK DVD) | Chelsea Films | Dir: Christian E. Christiansen | Tuva Novotny, Flemming Enevold , Carsten Bjørnlund |Buy:Id:A [DVD]
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