A slick triumph of casting and wordplay, The Usual Suspects was one of the most fiendishly intricate American films of the 1990s.

Rating: 9/10 (4 February 2010)

A story related in flashbacks, of five petty crooks, wrongly accused of a crime, who meet in a police line-up and unwittingly plan robberies together, before it dawns on them that a master criminal may (or may not) be controlling their every move.
The Usual Suspects is a fabulous con-trick of a film, playfully tweaking the traditions of story-telling, raising expectations and encouraging assumptions before changing tack with dizzying grace, and finally resolving itself with an explanatory tour de force that leads audiences to question everything they have already seen. Kevin Spacey steals the show as the hangdog Roger "Verbal" Kint, but everyone in this literal rogue's gallery plays his part. The brilliance of the story's structure encouraged a whole generation of screenwriters to emulate its feat. Commercial gold dust, in the sense that people were drawn to see it again, to pick up on the clues they missed first time round. On June 17, 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten Top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. The Usual Suspects was acknowledged as the tenth best mystery film.