Overall I really loved the movie!!! A must watch for anyone who loves movies.

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2012)

The movie "The Usual Suspects" directed by Bryan Singer is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. The plot twist was amazing at the end. The movie showed that emotion and distraction of a very charismatic individual being Kevin Spacey's character Verbal played a key component of emotions of fear to manipulation of a story to deceive another character's point of view and also for us the audience who viewed the film. Verbal and a Hungarian criminal were the only two survivals. Verbal is interrogated by the character Dave Kujan who is played by Chazz Palminteri to find out the whole story of everyone involved. Verbal is a cripple and rambles a lot on his stories. He introduces the five criminals that includes Michael McManus played by Stephen Baldwin, Dean Keaton played by Gabriel Byrne, and Todd Hockney played by Kevin Pollak, and Fred Fenster played by Benicio Del Toro. They were all taken in for a lineup of a crime they didn't commit. As the working relationship between the five criminals develops in the movie, the Hungarian criminal who is hospitalized mentions the name Keyser Soze, who Verbal describes as a person of urban myth. Verbal then states that a man name Kobayashi who works for Soza blackmails them to do the boat of Soze's rival in cocaine trafficking that tied into the massacre. After finishing, Dave tells his side of what he thinks happened on the boat as all setup by Dean, which I can kind of see with this analysis because at the beginning of the movie it shows a darker shadow man shooting at Dean. Verbal then breaks down and agrees but is let go due to no charges being pressed. Then when we think the movie is over, this is where the plot twist happens! When Dave lets Verbal goes, he sits on his desk and then slowly notices the board that is hanging up on his wall. He then drops his mug that the camera shoots in slow motion pace. Then there is a fast pace close up shot for all the document clippings on the board along with clips of the beginning part of the movies that shows every character and locations used in the story by Verbal was fabricated from the beginning. There is also a close up scene for the mug to show that was used also with naming the character Kobayish. He runs out to go after Verbal but it is too late. The camera also shows a fax that comes in with a picture of what the hospitalize criminal described as Soze. Another shot shows the camera filming Verbal body transformation starting with his feet to his hands working as normal. Then your point of view of the character of Verbal changes to him being Soze as his gets into the car with a man who looks like the Kobayashi ending on Verbal's quote "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist. And like that, poof. He's gone." (Singer, 1995). Another movie that is similar to this movie is Fight Club. The way the movie is made, it creates a point of view where we believe in one thing of the main character and yet it turns around and changes on us. Two techniques used a lot during the movie were camera angles/tilting and lighting. I noticed that the even in really dark scenes, like the beginning of the movie the lighting was really bright on the character Dean's face and Soza was shadowed out even with the flames around them. The camera was then moved when Soza shot at him, leading us to only believe he was killed. The best part of the techniques used was editing of the scenes for when Dave figured out the story was fabricated by Verbal as he looked at all the documents and images on his wallboard and also his mug. I really liked the movie because it shows how a perception of a situation or person is not always accurate to what actually occurred due to the falsified details given by one person. Emotion is a strong persuasion for us to believe in the unknown, especially fear. It is kind of like what we hear on the news. They will tell us one thing and yet the situation may actually be different than what is told.