Identity Thief (2013) Movie Review

IDENTITY THIEF (2013) MOVIE REVIEW

I think the absolute worst thing about this movie is that they made a Jason Bateman movie so unoriginal and uninspired. Never the less, let's see how Jason Bateman's latest film Identity Thief stacks up.

The movie begins where we are introduced to accountant Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) who seems to be having mysterious problems financially as many of his credit cards are strangely becoming invalid and worthless. After being mistakenly arrested, he explains to the police that his identity has been stolen and attempts to plead to them to stop the criminal responsible, Diana (Melissa McCarthy). Because he may face legal charges for the constant crimes that his thief has been doing, his boss Daniel Casey (John Cho) is threatening to fire him. That is unless he can travel from Denver to Miami, restrain Diana and bring her back to Denver to bring her to justice, all in one week. This may prove to be more difficult than he expected as with an identity thief, nothing is too crazy. Now to be completely honest, I was very much interested in the whole premise of the movie and I for one was really hoping they would take this idea to strange and hilarious places. While they didn't completely do this, they did go on a route with it that still had me interested and at times, had me caring about the various characters that these two meet in the film. Overall, I had no real qualms with this story at all.

One of the things that unfortunately made it an easily shunned by critics as well as the public is that nothing in the film seems realistic and just isn't very well paced. Basically, the movie doesn't flow very well as a movie. For example, in one scene Sandy and Diana will be talking and literally the next scene there is a car chase with debree flying everywhere. Another problem with the film is how the movie is the characters mixed into the plot. While I had no worries with Sandy and Diana's whole story, around the middle of the film is where things start to misdirect to weird and messy places. At this time, we are introduced to two mobsters named Marisol and Julian (Genesis Rodriguez and T.I.). These characters just seemed very pointless and during the movie you just forgot they existed. It is not until they appear on screen again is when you remember their whole story and why they are in it. However, there is one character that in my eyes had some relevance as it made it sense for him to be in the film. That is man that is only known as a Skip-tracer (Robert Patrick). The reason it had sense for this character to be introduced was because he is a skip-tracer, who is basically a person who brings in a bail jumper and is since Diana has been missing court dates, it makes sense for him to be hunting her. 

As for the acting in the film, I actually thought it was really good considering the circumstances. Jason Bateman is basically himself in every movie, which is never a down. Melissa McCarthy basically re-enacts her role from Bridesmaids but instead of a bridesmaid, she is a criminal. However out of every single person in this film, Eric Stonestreet included, there is one man that absolutely steals the show for me and that is Robert Patrick. Although some people may not know who this man is, EVERYONE knows him as his portrayal as the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The reason I liked his character so much was because of how he was showed towards the end of the film and how dedicated he is to his job, which I always admire. Overall, the acting was actually really surprising for a film that is centred around identity theft.

To conclude, I felt that although the film clearly does not deserve to be deemed as fantastic and Oscar-worthy, I feel it does at least deserve to be watched. While I certainly did not like it per say, I defiantly did not loathe and despise it as it was genuinely a movie that had me laughing in parts, and most of these jokes hit the nail on the head. Anyhow, the film really is not getting a good enough review from the public and critics as it does deserve at least an above average rating, and nothing less nor more. 

RATING: 6/10