The Usual Suspects

Rating: 4/10 (15 May 2003)

Once again American cinema falls victim to the old Hollywood ideology: If it made money before, why not again? Four years ago The Sixth Sense started a trend of `intelligent shockers' that movie execs are still bleeding audiences with to this day. Unfortunately, trying to bottle-up the magic of The Sixth and pass it off as something new usually leaves me with a Sense of repetitiveness and with Identity, wasted time. A bad case of unbelievable happenchance finds ten strangers marooned in a roadside motel with no working phones and all roads leading out rendered useless by a raging storm. One by one the unfortunate guests meet with grizzly demise without many clues to who the killer actually is. The obvious suspect is the convict (Jake Busey), but as Ed (John Cusack) and Rhodes (Ray Liotta), the natural leaders of the group, try and find some answers, the bodies start to pile up and the identity of the killer becomes more mysterious and complex. With strong performances from Cusack and Liotta and a perfectly eerie setting for a horror show, there was enough about James Mangold's Identity to keep me interested. But by the end of the second act the writing takes a turn for the worst, or more accurately, a turn towards the familiar. The way this movie plays out has been done countless times before and in better style. And there in lies the problem: Why spend ninety minutes and nine bucks on a film that seems pointless and trite? So if you like The Sixth Sense or The Ring or any other number of similarly formulated films I suggest renting your favorite intelligent-shocker/plot-twist flick and spend a night at home. An unfortunate 2 1/2 out of 5 stars.