The Usual Suspects Movie Review
The Usual Suspects Review
Excellent
Rating: R
1995
Cast & Crew
Director : Bryan Singer
Producer : Michael McDonnell, Bryan Singer
Screenwriter : Christopher McQuarrie
Starring Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Pollack, Benicio Del Toro, Stephen Baldwin
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The Usual Suspects, the heavily hyped new film from Bryan Singer, is finally
here, and with it comes the answer to the riddle posed in its high-powered ad
campaign, "Who is Keyser Soze?"
Keyser Soze is a semi-mythical crime kingpin who ultimately directs the actions
of five small-time hoods. With the promise of $91 million and the opportunity
to keep their lives, the enigmatic Keyser sends the quintet on a fool's errand
in San Pedro harbor: to stop a competitor's huge cocaine sale that would
interfere with Keyser's own drug operation. As the film opens, we see the
catastrophic results of the mission.
The band of unlucky criminals includes the classy Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne),
palsied Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), hardware specialist Hockney (Kevin Pollak),
entry-man McManus (Stephen Baldwin), and the mush-mouthed Fenster (Benicio Del
Toro). Kint, the lone survivor of the five felons, is quizzed by U.S. Customs
Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) about the crime. The remainder of the movie
shows us the tale he weaves.
The Usual Suspects puts some neat twists on the classic crime drama, and it's
one of the blackest comedies you'll see this year. All the actors nail their
parts with ultra-cool finesse, and just listening to Del Toro mumble his lines
is worth the cost of the ticket alone. Singer's direction is also completely
on target.
My problems with the film come from the plot. The primary difficulty is that
the movie sometimes gets a little too clever for its own good, the same problem
Hal Hartley ran into with this year's Amateur. While it keeps you in stitches,
the film takes its multi-layered riddles a little too far, and while this is
somewhat critical to the film, it's still a bit much. The end result is a
picture bogged down by the weight of maintaining an overdone mystique.
The other "minor" problem is the mystique itself, regarding the identity of
Keyser Soze. 45 minutes into the film, I placed my bet on the name of Soze's
alter-ego. An hour later, I won, despite some rather unfair trickery on behalf
of the script. While the flashback clues can be very misleading (a la
Hitchcock's Stage Fright), they never come out and deliberately lie to the
viewer. Regardless, it still shouldn't stop the audience from figuring it all
out, well in advance.
Despite all this, The Usual Suspects is a funny, visually stunning, and
much-needed change of pace from recent thrillers, which have had the
originality of a Xerox machine. I'm happy to say that this one's no copy.
A newly-released DVD features commentary from Singer and writer Christopher
McQuarrie as well as a separate track from the editor(!). Additional bonus
features abound.
