The greatest trick Bryan Singer ever pulled off was this film

Rating: 7/10 (17 April 2006)

In 1995 the Oscar for Best Picture went to Mel Gibson's Braveheart. I thought it should have gone to Ron Howard's Apollo 13, but the REAL film that should have won wasn't even nominated; Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects, which was nominated for only two Academy Awards (best supporting actor and best original screenplay), which it both won. Here we have a fast paced, confusing "hall-of-mirrors" crime-noir/thriller that's loaded with great performances from an ensemble cast, a great score and a whooping of a twist ending that's quite literally jaw-dropping. This is a film that's truly memorable and deserves to be a classic.
The film starts off with what looks like five random criminals being brought in because of a bogus truck robbery. The five men then plan to get back at the cops by uncovering a corrupt service the police were providing to certain high-paying criminals. These five "usual suspects" grow closer to one another, coming together to pull off another job in L.A. which is where things start to get sticky. They end up getting involved with a sinister crime lord that no one seems to have ever seen or met, named Keyser Soze. Is Keyser real or is he just a figment of someone's imagination? The more the jig-saw puzzle pieces seem to be coming together, the more the whole puzzle starts to change and fall apart.
You'll think you're on top of it all, but eventually the rug will be pulled out from beneath your feet. The film does an excellent job of playing with your mind, and at the same time convincing you that you think you know what's going on, but it's not until the final ten minutes that you'll start to be able to pull back and look at the big picture and realize that you've been had. My hats off to director Bryan Singer (who later went on to bigger fame with 2000's X-Men) and writer Christopher McQuarrie for keeping all of this not only surprising, but fun, and exciting, without ever becoming too complicated or too confusing. But a lot of praise should also go to the fine cast as well, including Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri, Benicio Del Toro, Pete Postlethwaite and a really knockout performance from Kevin Spacey, which earned him an Oscar for the role of Verbal.
If you haven't already seen The Usual Suspects by now I highly recommend you go out and buy the special edition DVD right now, don't think about renting it, you'll just end up buying it later any way. It's a complicated, well crafted and nearly flawlessly written thriller that's exciting and puzzling to watch the first time, and fun to watch again and again. This is one of my top ten favorite films of the nineties, and one of my all-time personal favorites as well.