Best movie ever.

Rating: 10/10 (5 September 2005)

Five men are brought into a police station under suspicion of hijacking a truck. Their names are Dean Keaton, Michael McManus, Todd Hockney, Fred Fenster, and Verbal Kint. While in jail, they decide to work together to pull off an emerald heist. After the heist, they get greedy, and meet the enigmatic Kobayashi, the lawyer for the most feared criminal in the world: Keyser Soze. No one knows who Soze is, but they fear him. As Kint puts it, "Keaton always said that he doesn't believe in god, but he fears him. Well, I believe in god, and the only thing I'm afraid of is Keyser Soze." The Usual Suspects is the most daring, inventive, and fun movie I've ever seen. Its brilliance starts with the acting, which is uniformly excellent. After seeing Kevin Spacey's performance in this film, he instantly became my favorite actor. He plays the cowardly cripple, Verbal Kint, who is the lone survivor of a drug deal gone wrong. Chazz Palminteri plays Agent Kujan of Customs who interviews Kint throughout the film about what happened the night before when the deal went bust. The dialog these two exchange is some of the best dialog ever to come from the silver screen. Kujan is obsessed with convincing himself that Dean Keaton played by Gabriel Byrne is dead. Keaton was an ex corrupt cop who had supposedly died in a fire, but then turned up alive a few years later. Kujan is convinced that Keaton was manipulating Kint for his own purposes. "But why me? Why not Fenster or McManus or Hockney? Why me? I'm stupid. I'm a cripple. Why me?"--Kint to Kujan "Because you're a cripple, Verbal. Because you're stupid, because you're weaker than them."--Kujan to Kint. Perhaps the best performance, even eclipsing Spacey's, is Pete Pete Postlethwaite's turn as Kobayashi. He is truly terrifying in this role. Kobayashi is cold blooded and has a heart of stone. He scares the five tough criminals into working for Soze. But who is Soze? That is the question that this entire film hinges on. And the answer is one that will be remembered forever. Director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie combine to make this film the greatest movie I've ever seen.