The Usual Suspects

 

The Usual Suspects
Promotional poster
Directed by	Bryan Singer
Produced by	Michael McDonnell Bryan Singer
Written by	Christopher McQuarrie
Starring	Gabriel Byrne Chazz Palminteri Kevin Spacey Stephen Baldwin Kevin Pollak Benicio del Toro
Music by	John Ottman
Cinematography	Newton Thomas Sigel
Editing by	John Ottman
Distributed by	UK 1995-1999 PolyGram Filmed Entertainment 1995 USA Theatrical Gramercy Pictures Worldwide 1999-present Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	January 1995 (premiere at Sundance) August 16 1995 25 August, 1995 19 October, 1995
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$6,000,000 (est.)
Gross revenue	$23,272,306 (USA)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Usual Suspects^[1] is a 1995 American neo-noir film written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. It stars Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollak, and Pete Postlethwaite. It tells the story of Roger "Verbal" Kint (Spacey), a small-time con man, who is in a police interrogation, and who tells his interrogator, U.S. Customs Agent David Kujan (Palminteri), a convoluted story about events leading to a massacre and massive fire that have just taken place on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro Bay. Using flashback and narration, Verbal's story becomes increasingly complex as he tries to explain why he and his partners-in-crime were on that boat, but not everything is as it seems.

The film, shot on a $6 million budget, did not create much excitement prior to its initial release and was released in few theaters, but it received favorable reviews and was given a wider release, grossing far more than expected. The film eventually became one of the most highly regarded of the crime-drama genre. McQuarrie won an Oscar for the screenplay and Spacey won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

Plot

The movie begins on the deck of a ship in San Pedro, California, where an injured man identified as "Keaton" (Byrne) speaks briefly with a shadowy figure identified as Keyser Söze. Keaton attempts to destroy the ship, but his efforts are thwarted by Keyser. After Keaton asks what time it is, Keyser appears to shoot him twice. Keyser then uses his cigarette to set the ship ablaze as he makes his escape.

The next day, FBI Agent Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) and U.S. Customs Special Agent Dave Kujan arrive in San Pedro separately to investigate what happened on the boat. Dozens of men on the pier/boat are dead, and there appear to be only two survivors - Verbal Kint and a hospitalized Hungarian man. Baer visits the hospital and interrogates the Hungarian, who claims that "Keyser Söze" was in the harbor "killing many men." Intrigued, Baer has the Hungarian describe Söze while a police sketch artist draws a rendering of Söze's face.

Verbal Kint has a job. He tells the authorities everything he knows in exchange for immunity. After making his statement to the district attorney, Verbal is placed in a police station office where Kujan requests to hear the story again, from the beginning. Verbal begins his tale: Six weeks prior, five crooks are brought together in a police line-up on trumped-up charges. They are an eclectic bunch: Keaton is a corrupt ex-cop who appears to have given up his life of crime. McManus (Baldwin) is a crack shot with a temper and a wild streak; Fenster (del Toro) is McManus' partner who speaks in mangled English; Hockney (Pollak) is a tough, amoral hijacker who forms an instant rivalry with McManus; and Verbal himself is a diminutive con artist with cerebral palsy.

Incensed at their arrests, the five criminals join forces to plan a high-stakes robbery that targets corrupt police officers in the NYPD. Thanks to Verbal's intricate plan, the robbery is a success. Not only do the criminals come away with money and jewels, no one is killed and the corrupt cops are arrested. Kint, Keaton, McManus, Fenster, and Hockney travel to California to sell the stolen gems to a small-time fence named "Redfoot" (Peter Greene). While in California, they partake in another job: the robbery of Saul Berg, a local jewel smuggler. The robbery goes wrong, and the crew is forced to kill Saul's bodyguards as well as Saul himself. The men then meet with a lawyer named Kobayashi (Postlethwaite), who originally suggested stealing from Saul. At the meeting, Kobayashi reveals that he works for "Keyser Söze," an almost mythic criminal mastermind, whose name evokes both skepticism and fear from the criminals. Because Kobayashi has knowledge of the five's individual criminal doings, he blackmails them into performing a dangerous job for Söze - the destruction of a ship in the San Pedro harbor. The ship, which has $91 million of cocaine aboard it, is part of a drug deal that will aid Soze's competitors.

In the present, Verbal explains to Kujan who Söze is, according to the explanations of his fellow criminals. Keyser Söze, as Verbal relates, is organized crime's answer to the bogeyman. When Söze was a small-time Turkish drug runner, a rival Hungarian gang tried to seize his territory by breaking into his house and threatening his family, raping his wife and killing one of his children. In response to the gang's threats, Söze killed his own family and all but one of the gangsters, who is spared in order to carry the news to the rest of the gang. Söze then initiated a brutal vendetta against the gang, systematically eliminating their friends, family, children, lovers, parents, and even their debtors, as well as their homes and businesses. He then completely disappeared; he almost never did business in person without an alias, and made sure that even his own henchmen did not know for whom they truly worked. With time, Söze's story took on mythic stature, with most people either doubting his existence or disbelieving it entirely.

Back in the narrative, the criminals debate on whether Kobayashi's boss is real. Fenster bails from the group in the night, but he is tracked and killed by Kobayashi's men. After Kobayashi reveals that he has the means to kill or brutally injure the remaining four criminals' loved ones if they do not go through with the arrangement, they are forced to concede. On the night of the cocaine deal, the sellers (a group of Argentine mobsters) are on the dock, as are the buyers (a group of Hungarian mobsters). Keaton tells Verbal to stay back and flee if the plan goes wrong. Verbal watches the boat from a distance. Keaton, McManus and Hockney attack the men at the pier. The three seem to be on the verge of success, but their efforts are foiled when Keyser Söze himself appears and kills Hockney and McManus, along with most of the Hungarians. Keyser seems to shoot Keaton, and the audience sees the beginning scene over again.

Verbal's story is over. Kujan then reveals what he has deduced, with the aide of Baer: The boat hijacking was not about cocaine, but rather to ensure that one man aboard the ship—Arturo Marquez, one of the few individuals alive who could positively identify Söze—is killed. After Söze killed Marquez, he killed everyone else on the ship and set it ablaze. Kujan presses Verbal on whether Keaton truly is dead (no one witnessed his death), and even goes so far as to say Keaton was acting as "Keyser Söze" and is still alive. Verbal breaks into tears and admits that the whole plan, from the beginning, was Keaton's idea. By this time, Verbal's bail has been posted, and he departs with his immunity.

Verbal retrieves his personal effects from the property officer, while Kujan, relaxing in the office he used for the interrogation, comments that Verbal was spared to keep the legend of Keyser Söze alive. Suddenly, Kujan notices that crucial details and names from Verbal's story are words appearing on objects around the room. (Most notably, the cups from which they both have been drinking coffee are made by a company called Kobayashi Porcelain.) Finally putting the pieces together, Kujan scrambles outside, just missing a fax with the police artist's impressions of Keyser Söze's face, which looks almost exactly like the now-released Verbal Kint. As Verbal leaves the jail, his distinctive limp suddenly disappears, and his contorted, palsied hand straightens out. He then steps into a waiting Jaguar limo driven by "Mr. Kobayashi," departing just before Kujan arrives and misses him.

Cast

• Gabriel Byrne as Dean Keaton
• Chazz Palminteri as US Customs Special Agent Dave Kujan
• Kevin Spacey as Roger "Verbal" Kint
• Stephen Baldwin as Michael McManus
• Kevin Pollak as Todd Hockney
• Benicio del Toro as Fred Fenster
• Dan Hedaya as Sergeant Jeffrey "Jeff" Rabin
• Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi
• Giancarlo Esposito as FBI Agent Jack Baer
• Suzy Amis as Edie Finneran

Production

Bryan Singer met Kevin Spacey at a party after a screening of the young filmmaker's first film, Public Access.^[2] Spacey was so impressed that he told Singer and McQuarrie that he wanted to be in whatever film they did next. McQuarrie wrote the role of Verbal Kint for Spacey.^[3] Singer and McQuarrie first came up with the visual idea for the poster: "five guys who meet in a line-up," Singer remembers.^[4] The character of Söze is based on John List, who murdered his whole family and then disappeared for almost two decades before he was ultimately apprehended.^[5] McQuarrie wrote eight to nine drafts of his screenplay over the course of four months until Singer felt it was ready to shop around to the studios, none of which, and most of the independent ones, were interested except for a European financing company.^[6] McQuarrie and Singer had a difficult time getting the film made because of the non-linear story, the huge amount of dialogue and lack of cast attached to the project. However, the European money allowed the film's producers to make offers to actors and assemble a cast. They had to offer the actors well below what they usually made but they agreed because of the quality of McQuarrie's script and the chance to work with each other.^[4] However, the money fell through and Singer used the script and the cast to attract Polygram to pick up the negative.^[6] The budget was set at $5.5 million and the film was shot in 35 days^[6] in Los Angeles, San Pedro, and New York City.^[7]

According to Byrne, the cast bonded quickly during rehearsals.^[2] He also said that they were often laughing between takes and "when they said, 'Action' we'd barely be able to keep it together."^[2] Spacey also said that the hardest part was not laughing through takes, with Baldwin and Pollack being the worst culprits.^[3] Their goal was to get the usually serious Byrne to crack up.^[3] For example, the line-up scene took 15 takes because everyone kept laughing. Byrne remembers, "Finally, Bryan just used one of the takes where we couldn't stay serious."^[2] Del Toro worked with his friend Alan Shaterian to develop Fenster's distinctive, almost unintelligible speech patterns.^[8] Spacey says that they shot the interrogation scenes with Palminteri over a span of five to six days.^[3] The stolen emeralds were real gemstones on loan for the movie.^[5] In the scene in which the crew meets Redfoot after the botched drug deal, Redfoot flicks his cigarette at McManus' (Baldwin) face. The scene was originally to have the Redfoot character flick the cigarette at Baldwin's chest, but the actor missed and hit Baldwin's face by accident. Baldwin's reaction in the film is real.^[5]

Singer described Suspects as Double Indemnity meets Rashomon and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time. You can get it a second time in a way you never could have the first time around."^[7]

Response

Suspects averaged a strong $4,181 per screen at 517 theaters and the following week added 300 play dates.^[6]

While embraced by most viewers and critics, The Usual Suspects was the subject of harsh derision by some. Roger Ebert, in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four.^[9] However, Rolling Stone magazine praised Spacey, saying his "balls-out brilliant performance is Oscar bait all the way."^[10]

The film consistently ranks in the Top 20 on the Internet Movie Database.^[11] It was also voted as having the best plot twist, beating out The Sixth Sense, The Crying Game, and Witness for the Prosecution in an IMDB poll.^[12]

Awards

• Academy Awards
  • Best Supporting Actor (Spacey)
  • Best Original Screenplay (McQuarrie)
• BAFTA Awards
  • Best Film (Singer, McDonnell)
  • Best Screenplay—Original (McQuarrie)
  • Best Editing (John Ottman)
• Edgar Awards
  • Best Motion Picture Screenplay (McQuarrie)
• Independent Spirit Awards
  • Best Screenplay (McQuarrie)
  • Best Supporting Actor, Male (del Toro)
• National Board of Review Awards
  • Best Supporting Actor (Spacey)
  • Best Acting by an Ensemble (cast)

Further reading

• Christopher McQuarrie (March 2001). The Usual Suspects. Faber & Faber. ISBN 0571203256. 
• Ernest Larsen (June 2002). The Usual Suspects. British Film Institute. ISBN 0851708692. 

References

See also

• Twist ending
• Unreliable narrator

External links

• The Usual Suspects at the Internet Movie Database

Preceded by Four Weddings and a Funeral

BAFTA Award for Best Film 1996 tied with Sense and Sensibility

Succeeded by The English Patient

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