The puzzle that wouldn't play fair

Rating: 2/10 (24 September 2008)

The Usual Suspects is a movie regarded by many as one of the best crime dramas of all time. As any crime drama it opens with a puzzle: a scene unfolds and the viewer watches tentatively, every detail potentially being the one that blows the mystery wide open. Soon we find ourselves a fly on the wall, watching an interrogation between a slimy character named "Verbal" and a rather generic law enforcer. The conversation twists and turns from hostility, to bargaining, to mutuality as angles are played on both sides to try and outsmart the other.
Verbal begins to replay his story, and we immediately mistake a point of view for objectivity. Before long a daring plan for a heist arises, as does the name "Keyser Soze", a legendary villain unphased even by murdering his own family to proclaim to the world just how much of a big bad wolf he really is. The story itself becomes harder and harder to follow, as motivations and means twist more and more. The mind strains trying to follow it all, blissfully unaware of whats to come. The film presents itself as something to be solved, and we all race to try and beat the movie at its own game.
The conclusion, argued by many as brilliant, is nothing more than a Deus Ex Machina. Its the film equivalent of "and it was all a dream", with just a little more window dressing. We discover Verbal has used his surroundings to manufacture the entire story, and even more importantly, is in fact Keyser Soze.
A stunning realization, no doubt. The more I thought about the shocking final minutes, the more I came to reason that I hadn't been fooled, I had been cheated. A plot twist makes new sense of something you've seen before, but in The Usual Suspects there's nothing to indicate we are seeing Verbals description, and not simply the past.
Think of all the movies where a person begins describing a scene, and it cuts back to that scene happening. Are we looking at what actually happened, or what the character is describing? Its difficult to say for certain, but it is hardly unreasonable to expect the former. Playing on such a fickle element of cinematography is risky business, and I was hardly sold.
So much rides on the final minutes, and many are impressed because it dares to do what few other movies consider: to make an hour long turn of events completely irrelevant. We don't see it coming, but whilst the writers were wondering if they could, they never stopped to wonder if they should.