Nice film but the content is all "...window dressing!"

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2000)

A very clever who-done-it, that had rave reviews and audiences were waving their hands in the air wondering who the real Keyser Soze was, and saying how wonderful the twist at the end of the film was.
True, seeing the film first time round you do feel as if you've missed something by the end and only by seeing the film a second, third & forth time do you really begin to pick up the many threads.
But in essence its hokum, nothing more than a who-done-it bluff on the audience, or as Dean Keaton, one of the major characters says in the film "...it's window dressing..a pipe dream.."
Five crims owe a big debt to the mysterious Soze, that involves hijacking a boat full of $91million of drugs from a rival of Soze's. It all goes horribly wrong and the police want to know what's going on.
And thats where we have the cripple, Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) offer his point of view of what happened. Trouble is at the end of the film the bluff is played and you begin to wonder if what he said was really true.
Perhaps the whole film was a con - as seen through Kint's eyes from start to finish, and that we, as the audience, don't get the chance to take an objective view.
Either way, the film's notoriety seems to depend on the ending, while the other 95% of the film goes through the motions. Trouble is we don't know enough about these five gangsters, other than Kint, to really care about them. They remain distant & aloof, angry & cold; bit players in Kint's world.
But the cops aren't exactly wholesome either, especially Dave Kujan, the hard nosed dick who bullies Kint into submission during the interrogation, and regards himself as intellectually superior to the cripple, only to have his comeuppance later on (But then if we are seeing the film from Kint's point of view, then of course you'd expect this)
The only other interesting character next to Kint is Pete Postlethwaite's Kobayashi. A very cool player, plenty of understatement but a hint of menace in his eyes. Strangely I was more scared of him than any of the gang of five, the least inspiring of which would have to be Gabriel Byrne as Dean Keaton.
Byrne tries to look/play the tough leader of the group, and resorts to method acting by grimmacing a couple of times and staring at people with about as much conviction as Roger Rabbitt, not helped by a rather weird Irish/Brooklyn accent, which just doesn't cut the mustard.
So yes, its a good film that offers the audience plenty of meat but on reflection it doesn't rank anywhere near the Big Sleep, Sleuth, any Hitchcock film or Agatha Christie caper.
Who is Kyser Soze? Who cares!
Good, but not that good
***/*****