Directed by Anas Khan and Akhil Paul, it was tough to keep up with the events in Identity, and there was so much that happened in those excruciatingly long 2 hours and 35 minutes. The film does not let you catch your breath, and every second, it throws in a twist that takes the storyline in a completely opposite direction. The problem is not how stuffed with events Identity is, but that it is all way too conveniently arranged. So, let’s try to understand the series of events through a detailed explainer of the film.
Spoiler Alert
What was Amar up to?
At the beginning of Identity, we saw that a man named Amar Felix was blackmailing girls by threatening to expose videos of them in compromising situations. Now at times, he raped women and recorded the act, and sometimes he just placed hidden cameras in trial rooms and used the footage to extort money. But Amar didn’t do anything of his own accord, as he was obeying the orders of an unknown predator, the “identity” of whom was not revealed to us to begin with. One day, Amar went to the manufacturing base of a company named Samudra Silks to meet somebody he was blackmailing. Things didn’t turn out as Amar would have planned them. Somebody who knew that he was going to be there got hold of him. That unknown man killed Amar and set the entire factory on fire. A journalist by the name of Alisha Abdul Salam had seen the face of the man who had killed Amar and escaped from there. Alisha got intel from an informant named Nakul that the man who was blackmailing girls was going to be going to the Samudra Silk compound. Now, Nakul was the same man who helped Amar with the technical aspects of his business. So, for example, if Amar had to encrypt a hard drive or hack into the security system of a place; he took Nakul’s help. Nakul had wanted to expose Amar for the longest time, but he was also scared that the man would do something to him if he got to know about it. But then Nakul took his chances and informed Alisha about everything.
Who killed Amar?
Alisha came in contact with the police, and found the case of Amar’s death was being handled by a police officer named Allen Jacob. Allen started his investigation, and just for safety purposes, he decided to stay at his superior, DYSP Dineshan’s flat. Now, the problem that arose was that Alisha met with an accident after she left the abandoned factory compound where she saw the killer. Following that, she developed a kind of condition that, in medical terms, was called prosopagnosia, despite having an almost perfect photographic memory. In this condition, a person cannot recognize faces, and it was uncertain if the shock of seeing the killer affected Alisha’s neuro functions or if it was the accident that she encountered after witnessing his violent act. Nonetheless, the outcome of the case depended upon Alisha, and with her condition, it was impossible for her to guide the sketch artist and help him make a portrait of the killer. A man named Haran lived just next to the Dineshan’s apartment, and the latter often took his help in order to find a solution to some tricky problems. Haran hadn’t had a very good childhood. After his parents got divorced, Haran’s father got custody of him. His father treated him like a cadet, and Haran never got the love and affection he craved. Due to that, a void was created inside the boy, and he developed an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. After the death of his father, Haran went back to live with his mother, who was living with her brother Sudarshan and her two daughters at that time. That’s when Sudarshan noticed that Haran had some extraordinary abilities that children of his age did not have. He saw that the boy had an exceptional knack for picking up on details that others didn’t notice. That is why Dineshan took Haran’s help a lot of times to solve some petty thefts around their housing society.
After Allen had witnessed his skills, he asked him to make a sketch based on what Alisha had told him. The first time Alisha gave the description, Haran ended up sketching his own face. Haran gave some excuse to Allen and told him that, a lot of times, people in a state of shock made that sort of mistake. On his second attempt, Haran ended up sketching an entire portrait, though Allen had doubts whether he had followed Alisha’s directions or not. There was a moment when Allen saw that Alisha had told Haran to make the nose in a particular shape, but he had gone with something very different. Allen believed Haran at that time, but soon, the truth came out in the open. Allen connected the dots and figured out that Haran was trying to save himself. Allen revealed everything to Dineshan when, out of nowhere, the man who Haran had sketched came to the police station and confessed to having killed Amar. Allen was in shock. He was pretty sure that it was Haran who had killed Amar, but then the man in the sketch appearing out of nowhere didn’t make sense at all.
That’s when, in Identity, Haran revealed the truth to Alisha. He told her that his stepsister, Neeru, had been raped by Amar. The family decided to leave the city and try whatever they could to help Neeru get over her trauma. But then one of the brothers of another victim arrived at Haran’s doorstep asking for help. Sakina and Neeru were both abducted and molested together. Sakina was also trying to move ahead in her life when, once again, Amar called the family and blackmailed them into giving him more money if they didn’t want the video of Sakina to be published online. That’s when Haran decided to help Sakina’s brother, and he went and murdered Amar. Now, the man who had confessed to having killed Amar was Sakina’s father, Ameer Ali, and he had agreed to take the blame for Amar’s death as he knew why his son and Haran went after him.
Why did Allen want Amar’s hard drive?
So according to the above-mentioned narrative, Haran had been the killer, proving Allen’s intuition was in the right place all along, and Amar, the lecherous criminal who ruined the lives of many girls, got what he deserved. But this was not the whole truth. The first shocking revelation that was made in Identity was that Allen had been suspended from the force for quite some time after he committed identity theft of witnesses in the witness protection program, and he was not officially authorized to investigate Amar’s case. Actually, Allen had come there to retrieve that hard drive in which Amar had stored all the explicit videos. Just as Allen got to know that Haran was behind Amar’s murder, Haran too realized that Allen wasn’t there to investigate the case but to find that hard drive.
Identity took us back in time through a flashback sequence, and we got to know what kind of despicable man Allen was. Allen was basically in charge of the witness protection program initiated by the state government. So, the man had access to top-secret information that he decided to use as leverage. He started selling the identities of these witnesses to the concerned parties, i.e., parties to whom they were going to testify in the court of law. Generally, the defendants in the case came from rich and powerful backgrounds, and so they paid Allen however much he asked. Allen’s main line of business was identity theft, and he had no plans of getting involved in blackmailing girls and making explicit content. Allen came in touch with Amar, and he realized that he could use him for his own benefit. Allen generally worked with a woman named Supriya, who acted as the middleman in these dealings. Supriya made Allen meet the liquor baron Chinnappa, who wanted to know about a woman named Chithrammal who was kept under the witness protection program. Back in the day, Chithrammal’s husband, a renowned journalist named Devarajan, had exposed Chinnappa and published an article against him. Chinnappa killed Devarajan, but what Chinnappa didn’t know was that Devarajan’s wife saw him in the act.
Later, Chithrammal reported what she saw, and that’s how she got inducted into the witness protection program. Now, Allen did sell her identity, but Chinnappa’s men were not able to kill Chithrammal. Chinnappa was after Allen’s life, as he now wanted him to do what was needed and kill Chithrammal at all costs. So, Haran speculated that Allen was blackmailing people who worked with the airport authority just so that they could enter inside the aircraft and assassinate Chithrammal. Allen’s plan was actually perfect, but what gave him away was Amar’s indiscretion. Allen only blackmailed girls whose relatives worked with the airport authority. But Amar started his own business secretly, and he started asking them for money. Had he not done that, then Alisha wouldn’t have gotten his call recording from Nakul, and the truth would have never come out in the open. Haran also realized that his sister became a victim only because Amar acted on his own accord, as the plan was never to abduct her. Sakina’s brother worked at the airport authority, and Allen had told Amar only to abduct her. But then he saw Neeru, and his lecherous instincts made him act impulsively. Haran thought that he had solved the mystery and that he wouldn’t have any problem saving Chithrammal, but he was wrong. Killing Chithrammal, or it will be better to say, only killing her, was never Allen’s plan.
Was Haran able to stop Allen?
Identity’s ending revealed that Haran was not some commoner but a Sky Marshal. Haran decided that he would board the plane on which Chithrammal was supposed to reach Bangalore and make sure that she landed safely. The truth was that Allen’s main target was never Chiithrammal, he wanted to kill all those who could testify against him in the court of law and prove that he had sold the identities of the victims. So, around seven such people were on the same flight that Chithrammal took, and though Haran felt that Allen had been working for Chinnappa for the longest time, it was not so. Haran, on his end, tried to create a contingency plan in case he was not able to find the assassin. He had taken Nakul’s help to book Chinnappa’s ticket on the same flight in which Chithrammal was traveling. Haran got to know that Allen was supposedly going to crash the plane and kill all the people onboard when he went and had a word with Chinnappa. Haran believed that if he threatened Chinnappa, then the killer wouldn’t go and kill Chithrammal. But then Haran realized that Allen had stopped working for Chinnappa a long time ago. Allen, back in the day, blackmailed two people: one was obviously Sakina, whose brother came to Haran for help, and the second was the father of the victim named Nivedita Suhdev. Nivedita’s father worked in the air traffic control department, and Allen told him to crash the plane if he didn’t want the video of his daughter to be leaked. But before Mr. Suhdev could do that, Haran figured everything out and cut the transponder, which meant that the connection between the air traffic control tower and the airplane was severed.
In Identity’s ending, the plane didn’t crash, but Allen was still on the loose, since he never got on the plane after he set everything in motion. Allen had blackmailed Devika (Haran’s sister) and forced her to aid his escape. Haran had made it a point not to stop until he got hold of Allen, who was trying to take up a new identity and leave the country for good. Haran got hold of the man and, just like a true-blue Sky Marshal, killed Allen on the chartered plane he had boarded to get out of the country. I guess there is a huge possibility that Haran and Alisha might end up together. We saw how she took his name with a playful smile. Also, both of them were the kind of people who followed a righteous path in their lives, and they never compromised on their principles no matter what kind of conflict came their way.
