He prayed to him, talked about him all the time. Young actor Aaron Refvem is pitch-perfect in embodying both personalities, making the prologue one of the film's strongest segments. "I’m picky about what I do on camera," said the serial voice actor, who plays Ryan's friend and drummer. They both fall in love with the same woman, creating a love triangle that leads to murder. The film starts with a black-and-white flashback, showing a Depression-era cotton-picking husband and wife (Brian Geraghty and Amanda Crew), agonizing over how they will take care of their newborns. "I found my birth mother and found out I have, not an identical twin, but a half brother, five half sisters and a full sister that I didn’t know about until 15 years ago. Marcellino is competent as a director, and the visuals are fine. Ryan loves God, does what his father says, attends seminary, but sneaks out of the house at night to attend music shows at fully-integrated (despite the fact that this takes place in Alabama in the 1940s) honky tonks and roadhouses. There is no sense in the film's music of Elvis' country and western roots or his love of gospel and there are none of the various intersecting influences that made Elvis' early recordings so genre-bending and revolutionary. "I watched him like a hawk on set. Finally, Ryan rebels against his parents' wishes and launches his own music career -- performing the hits of Drexel Hemsley. Every 10 minutes or so, there's a disturbance of some kind, an unexpected event, which thwarts all pre-existing narrative trajectory out of orbit, spiraling viewers into a realm of uncertainty and continuing fascination. Identical twin brothers (both played by Blake Rayne) are separated at birth during the Great Depression. © 2020 The Hollywood Reporter Three Identical Strangers is a well-made documentary with excellent pacing and climatic developments. At an early age, the boy shows a gift for music, singing in the church choir, and his adoptive father thinks that God has called him to the ministry. Identical He wants in on it! Rayne was rehearsing with his band in a studio in Nashville, and executive producer Yochanan Marcellino was looking to rent out space for the film, when he met Rayne. The children grow up to become adult versions of themselves. FACEBOOK You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Two identical twin brothers are born, and, to keep in touch with the whole mythology of it, one is good and one is evil. Not only is he wholesomely convincing as both characters, but he goes above and beyond that. If you visit Graceland, there is a small gravestone for Jesse in the family burial plot outside the house. 0 of 1 people found this review helpful. Judd (whose mother, Naomi Judd, interestingly enough, married Larry Strickland, a member of The Stamps quartet, Elvis' regular gospel backup group throughout the 1970s), is excellent as well. All rights reserved. They need each other to exist, but they deeply resent the other's existence. That's what happened. Title: Keep this name in mind, you'll be hearing great things about this kid very very soon, I'm sure of it.The children grow up to become adult versions of themselves. One, Drexel Hemsley becomes a wildly successful '50s rock star, while the other, Ryan Wade, struggles to balance his passion for music and pleasing his parents, who want him to become a preacher. The family dynamic on the set was genuine: Marcellino's son, Dustin Marcellino, directed the film, and his father, Jerry, and son Jordan produced it through the family’s production company City of Peace Films. Sitemap | Richard is the good brother, who, despite his well-heartiness and benevolence, is a lost soul. Me or your lyin' eyes?" The premise of the movie sets the tone and intricacy of the narrative by itself: two identical twin brothers fall for the same woman. The question I have is how the cringe-worthy music in the film, supposed to signify the birth of rock 'n' roll, could ever have taken any world by storm? The twins here are named Ryan and Drexel Hemsley (both played by Blake Rayne , an Elvis impersonator.) But Ryan doesn't say to himself, "It's not just an uncanny resemblance. And we are meant to believe that the entire culture changed because of the music heard in "The Identical.". What if the Jesse-twin also had a hankering to make music? (2011). "Three Identical Strangers" tells an astonishing story, and the saga is even bigger than what's seen on screen. The Hollywood Reporter, LLC is a subsidiary of Prometheus Global Media, LLC. He is simply breathtaking in every single frame he's in, and thank God, he's in almost every one. "The worst day I ever had was when they said, 'Okay, we’re going to do all eight songs in a row like a montage,' and there were three songs I had never played, and I literally almost had a heart attack," he recalled. The dynamic stays the same, and the mythology of the prologue residues on the entire story. Richard is the good brother, who, despite his benevolence, is a lost soul. Fixed and cold when she is with Mark, playful and full of life when with Richard. He becomes two people so seamlessly that, not for a single moment was there a doubt in my mind as to who I was watching at any given scene. Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd somehow turn in beautifully-layered funny and human performances, a minor miracle all things considered. The most vicious serial killer of the 21st-century... and he's just getting warmed up! In a way, she plays two characters in her own right. After passing by the columned bar area, partygoers mingled in the back room, which was decked out with golden crystal chandeliers, velvet emerald curtains and exposed brick walls, showcasing fine art above black tufted booths. EMAIL ME. He has written a song called "City Lights," a ballad that sounds like a Michael Bolton dirge, and everyone rants and raves over how it is a hit. Identical twins are born, one is good and one is evil. “Three Identical Strangers,” directed by Tim Wardle, won the Special Jury Prize for Documentary Storytelling at the Sundance Film Festival. Three Identical Strangers is a 2018 documentary film directed by Tim Wardle, about the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, a set of identical triplets adopted as infants by separate families. Shelly is funny, cute, entirely lovable, and of course, the starting point of a love triangle that propels all characters into a quandary, one which is impossible to speak of without spoiling the movie, so, if you want to know what happens next, you'll have to watch it. What would've happened if Elvis Presley's twin brother had survived? Liotta manages to bring this envelope-thin character to full three-dimensional life. "The Identical" asks a series of questions: what if the twin had lived? The moves, the Elvis bumps and grinds, are indicated by Rayne rather than inhabited fully, and it repeatedly points out the gap between what we are seeing onscreen and the extraordinary level of Elvis' commitment to his performance style.