The film is an exhilarating mental battle.

Rating: 9/10 (28 July 2010)

The film is an exhilarating mental battle between Verbal Kint (Spacey) and U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan (Palminteri) keeps the action of the film intense and flowing throughout the film. The verbal battle, interview/ interrogation if you will, was over the heart of the truth behind a ship exploding in a California port. The central concern of the film was where to place blame for the master minding of the ship exploding in the harbor. The setting for the film was within the walls of a detective's office that happened to be extremely cluttered. A box of cigarettes along with the subsequent lighting of the cigarettes becomes an important piece of the tale and the relevance is only revealed late in the film. Kint was indulging Kujan's curiosity by telling the tale of the five suspects that were rounded up six weeks earlier by some random act of fate, as it appeared early in the film. The five suspects would be directly involved in the ship's destruction after the six weeks. The editing of the film, violently at times, flips the viewers back and forth from present to past and back again. The action, when not being a voyeur of Kint's story, is thrilling and action packed with killing, thievery, and tense meetings with other characters outside of the law. Kint's story is complex, intriguing, and the details are difficult to follow. However, if the viewer's full attention is given to the viewing, the story is probable. Con artists are seedy and are only out for themselves at every turn. The viewer wants to believe this intricate story of criminality at its finest. A criminal master mind is divulged while Kint is telling his story, Keyser Soze. Kujan badgers Kint into giving up who the alleged Soze really is. Angles and lighting portray Kint as the weaker of the two men in a physical sense. The calmness and deliberate actions of Kint, allowed Kint to maintain some dignity throughout the story. The overriding concern of both Kint and Kujan became predicting, with some reasonable certainty, the real identity of Soze. The overriding concern with a specific element within a film could be compared with the intensity of the meaning to Rosebud in "Citizen Kane". The complexity of the tale is revealed as Kint is walking out of the police station. This film is a definite must see.