• Rating:
• Genre: Crime
• Movie Type: Post-Noir (Modern Noir), Ensemble Film
• Themes: Mind Games, Cons and Scams, Crime Gone Awry
• Director: Bryan Singer
• Main Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite, Kevin Spacey
• Release Year: 1995
• Country: US
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• MPAA Rating: R

Plot

Near the end of The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey, in his Oscar-winning performance as crippled con man Roger "Verbal" Kint, says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." This may be the key line in this story; the farther along the movie goes, the more one realizes that not everything is quite what it seems, and what began as a conventional whodunit turns into something quite different. A massive explosion rips through a ship in a San Pedro, CA, harbor, leaving 27 men dead, the lone survivor horribly burned, and 91 million dollars' worth of cocaine, believed to be on board, mysteriously missing. Police detective Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) soon brings in the only witness and key suspect, "Verbal" Kint. Kint's nickname stems from his inability to keep his mouth shut, and he recounts the events that led to the disaster. Five days earlier, a truckload of gun parts was hijacked in Queens, NY, and five men were brought in as suspects: Kint, hot-headed hipster thief McManus (Stephen Baldwin), ill-tempered thug Hockney (Kevin Pollak), flashy wise guy Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), and Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a cop gone bad now trying to go straight in the restaurant business. While in stir, someone suggests that they should pull a job together, and Kint hatches a plan for a simple and lucrative jewel heist. Despite Keaton's misgivings, the five men pull off the robbery without a hitch and fly to Los Angeles to fence the loot. Their customer asks if they'd be interested in pulling a quick job while out West; the men agree, but the robbery goes horribly wrong and they soon find themselves visited by Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), who represents a criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze. Soze's violent reputation is so infamous that he's said to have responded to a threat to murder his family by killing them himself, just to prove that he feared no one. When Kobayashi passes along a heist proposed by Soze that sounds like suicide, the men feel that they have little choice but to agree. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Review

A slick triumph of casting and wordplay, The Usual Suspects was one of the most fiendishly intricate American films of the 1990s. Relentlessly stylish and growing more convoluted by the frame, the film invited its audience to take part in the confusion, to attempt to discern illusion from reality as if watching a magician's act. What makes The Usual Suspects remarkable is that fact and fiction never evolve into distinct entities, entwining in an almost indiscernible jumble to baffle the viewer. Like the all-important but (largely) unseen Keyser Soze, Suspects' genius rested in holding its audience hostage to the intangible, making it equally impossible to believe what you've seen or dismiss what you haven't. In turn, the film is shamelessly manipulative, demanding the audience's complete involvement and undivided attention; a bathroom break carries the risk of losing the plot entirely. As the men caught up in the film's labyrinthine intrigue, Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Kevin Pollak, and Stephen Baldwin fit their roles perfectly, demonstrating an ensemble casting coup. Spacey, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Verbal Kint, is particularly impressive, managing to be pathetic, off-handedly irreverent, and cunning all at once. The qualities on display in his performance make him the poster child for the film's overall tone: shifty, garrulous, and altogether not to be trusted, Spacey's Kint embodies the film's compulsive, charming will to deception. Director Bryan Singer handles his characters and the film's many twists with the ease of a devious master puppeteer, mixing liberal doses of film noir, humor, and intrigue with refreshing audacity. The result was one of the most accomplished thrillers of the decade, a mystery whose wild manipulations came courtesy of a director whose hands were very tightly gripped around the controls. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide

Cast

• Gabriel Byrne - Dean Keaton
• Stephen Baldwin - McManus
• Chazz Palminteri - Dave Kujan
• Kevin Pollak - Todd Hockney
• Pete Postlethwaite - Kobayashi
• Kevin Spacey - Roger "Verbal" Kint

Benicio Del Toro - Fred Fenster; Dan Hedaya - Jeff Rabin; Suzy Amis - Edie Finneran; Paul Bartel - Smuggler; Billy Bates - Bodyguard; Michelle Clunie - Sketch Artist; Vito D'Ambrosio - Arresting Officer; Giancarlo Esposito - Jack Baer; Christine Estabrook - Dr. Plummer; Peter Greene - Redfoot (uncredited); Clark Gregg - Dr. Walters; Castulo Guerra - Arturro Marquez; Morgan Hunter - Arkosh Kovash; Gene Lythgow - Cop on Pier; David Powladge - Bodyguard; Jack Shearer - Renault; Bert Williams - Old Cop; Carl Bressler - Saul Berg; Phillip Simon - Fortier; Frank Medrano - Rizzi; Louis Lombardi - Strausz

Credit

Hans Brockmann - Executive Producer; Howard Cummings - Production Designer; Roy Downey - Special Effects; François Duplat - Executive Producer; David S. Lazan - Art Director; Tom Sigel - Cinematographer; Francine Maisler - Casting; Sara Andrews - Set Designer; James Deck - First Assistant Director; Eric Golstein - Cinematographer; Art Horan - Executive Producer; Kenneth Kokin - Co-producer; Kenneth Kokin - First Assistant Director; Michael McDonnell - Producer; Christopher McQuarrie - Screenwriter; John Ottman - Editor; John Ottman - Composer (Music Score); Geoffrey Patterson - Musical Direction/Supervision; Geoffrey Patterson - Sound/Sound Designer; Scott Sakamoto - Cinematographer; Newton Thomas Sigel - Cinematographer; Bryan Singer - Director; Bryan Singer - Producer; Louise Mingenbach - Costume Designer; Robert Jones - Executive Producer

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