*Contains Spoilers* Criminal Film Classic!

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2011)

US Customs Agent Dave Kujan, portrayed by Chazz Palminteri, is investigating a terrible crime in the harbor where a heist gone wrong turned into a massacre. Kujan tracks down and questions the only survivor from the incident, Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey). Kint is a very unassuming man with a crippled hand and leg and shows himself to be somewhat of a coward as he describes the events that took place on the ship. Agent Kujan has convinced himself that Kint's partner Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) is the mastermind behind the events and that Keaton is still alive somewhere in hiding despite the testimony given to him by Kint that he is dead.
Kint's story is incredibly believable as it pegs the mastermind behind the heist as being none other than the somewhat mythical criminal and murderer of his own family, Keyser Soze. Even though nobody has actually seen Soze, Kint and through Kint's story, Agent Kujan believes Soze to be behind the massacre. Kujan then has to alter his beliefs somewhat, but still sticks to the ultimate fact that Dean Keaton is not only behind the whole fiasco; he is actually Keyser Soze. And he purposely got the four criminals Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Hockney (Kevin Pollack), and Kint to join him for the jewel heist as a front.
The story told by Kint is ultimately blown out of the water as Kujan decides to let him go from the interrogation. Just as Kint is walking out of the police station, what do we see come through the fax machine? The first police sketch of what Keyser Soze looks like. We finally get to see that Soze was actually Verbal Kint, and aside from that, Kint isn't even crippled! Arturo Marquez, the only man "alive" that can identify Soze, is in critical condition at a hospital and has given up who Soze is. We find out that Kint's story, which comprises almost the entire film, was all a lie. I believe that the film does a good job of foreshadowing the ultimate reveal the Kint as Soze. Throughout most of the story telling, everything is dimly lit and has subtle hints that Kint is not who he says he is. When we see events that actually take place, they are brightly lit with very exact details while the scenes showing Kint's story are dark and portray even the characters involved as being very confused. Soze didn't actually exist as he mentioned and for that matter, Redfoot, Kobayashi, and the drug deal that puts the five criminals together never existed either. The jewel heist and incidents at the harbor were all a front for Kint to kill the one man that could identify him and stage the whole incident as a heist gone wrong where he would have almost no hand in any killings.
The thing that makes this story so great aside from the events that are portrayed in the movie itself is the brilliance of the plot twist and the focus and theme of the movie. How many movies can say that they have a character based theme on a character that never really existed? That is the brilliance of the film and writing and is the reason for my comparison to the movie 12 Monkeys. 12 Monkeys focuses on the theme of preventing a terrible future, but also ultimately shows a focus on the character of James Cole (Bruce Willis). The film shows that Cole runs into himself in the past as a child while trying to prevent a future where most of mankind is wiped out by a man-made virus. You see the same scene in the beginning and end of the film without realizing that you are in fact seeing the events from the viewpoint of the same character (young Cole and future Cole). This film also utilizes some of the hidden foreshadowing to a plot twist that is used in The Usual Suspects as seen in some of the conversations between Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) and Cole at the mental hospital. Some of the conversations were used to show that Goines was in fact the mastermind behind the man-made virus.