Behind the headlines: Three Identical Strangers review

Great storytelling and an unbelievable real-life premise prove non-fiction can be as thrilling as fiction in Three Identical Strangers.

As someone who grew up on a steady diet of daytime talk shows and E! docudramas, the synopsis of Three Identical Strangers was too enticing to ignore. So often we see these miraculous stories about siblings reuniting after years and years of separation, but that’s where the story ends, there’s never any follow-up.

These unbelievable real life stories seem tailor-made for the covers of People Magazine or The National Inquirer, offering readers just a taste of what it’s like to have your life change so dramatically overnight. But like every story, there’s what you see on the surface and what’s shielded from the public eye. Revealing the dark truth behind what appeared to be a happy story of triplets reunited after being separated at birth, Three Identical Strangers is a thrilling ride from start to finish that leaves you begging for more by the time the credits roll.

Three Identical Strangers tells the story of how Robert, Edward, and David, three rock’n’roll loving 19 year olds living in New York in the early 80s, came to discover they were triplets separated at birth by an adoption agency for mysterious, and possibly sinister, reasons. The story swiftly became a news media sensation, blasting the trio from their normal, everyday lives to kings of the New York nightlife scene. Bobby, Eddy, and David became staples on the talk show circuit, going from sound stage to sound stage essentially answering the same basic questions they were asked on the last show, complete with coordinated outfits and movements. The audience, simply put, could not get enough of it.

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The whole country seemed completely enthralled over how remarkably similar these three young men were. From their nearly identical looks to their shared preference of Marlboro cigarettes and tastes in women, everyone became so fixated on how much they were the same that it became difficult for each of them to stand out on their own, and this took a toll on their relationships with each other.

Remembering that behind every cover story there are real people involved isn’t as self-evident as one would initially think. People like Eddy, Bobby, and David are plucked from their usual routine and put on a pedestal where they are marveled and gawked at without much thought given to how they feel, what they desire, or where their story goes from there. And with a feature film adaptation of the documentary already in development, it just goes to show just how eager audiences are to get relive the excitement of the initial media frenzy over and over again. Life always goes on, but what happens after the magazines and evening news stop covering a story can be more interesting than what makes the headlines.

In addition to giving the audience an inside look at what the 1980s version of a viral news story looked like, the film also challenges each viewer to consider where ethical boundaries should exist when considering the well-being of a child and whether or not the nature versus nurture debate can ever be settled once and for all. The twists and turns of Three Identical Strangers will have you gripping the arm rests of the theater so hard your knuckles turn white. Just when you think there can’t be another curve around the corner they throw two at you back to back. Despite facing some stiff competition from other fantastic documentaries this year, I’m confident in saying this is the front-runner for some serious hardware come awards season.

Three Identical Strangers is now playing in theaters nationwide.