I'm sure this title has been used before, but: The Usual Movie.

Rating: 1/10 (30 November 2008)

Calling The Usual Suspects one of the top one hundred movies of all time, much less at number 20, is absolutely hilarious. I'm not one of those pretentious losers who think everything with even a pinprick of influence on cinema is gold, and I don't base my scores as such. Put simply, The Usual Suspects is nothing but usual. Typical. Average. Run-of-the-mill. There are a lot of insanely overrated movies, and this has to be in the top 10. Was the plot twist pretty clever? Sure. But, dear God, folks, I've seen a least fifty better, bigger plot twists before in (far superior) movies that the fine-cinema-whores (meaning, people who gorge on "fine" movies and consider nothing else of value) wouldn't even consider because they aren't filled with average plots and two hours of pointless conversation scenes.
The Usual Suspects, on a very grounded level, is nothing more than this. A movie made for kids who grew up watching Clue, then turned 12 and decided they needed something more "mature". The Usual Suspects is perfect for that situation. It really shouldn't be taken any more seriously than that. It's not a hard-hitting, mature thriller as some claim it is. And it certainly isn't the timeless, untouchable classic some claim it is, either. Most of the people making those claims likely haven't even seen a true thrillermeaning one that is actually fast paced and thrillingin their lives.
Everything I just said above is why this is so average. It isn't a thriller at all, unless your definition of thriller is countless close-ups of men's faces and less action than an average soap opera. It's a drama. As a drama, the plot is your standard crime plot. Drugs, murder. How much more average can it get than that? Last I checked, drugs and murder were plots for average movies since the creation of the movie camera. You've seen it all before. The plot twist just twists and average story that I could care less about. Not to mention that if I were paying closer attention, and I wasn't, that I would have figured out the twist in the first half hour as a lot of people did. Even it is generic, even for its time.
The directing and acting both add a layer of cheese to the movie. It reminds me of a kid's movie in a lot of places. Sure, the actors all played their parts well enough, but the cripple was a little over-the-top and the directing was just childish. The only thing I can compare the directing to is to how 80s cheesy slasher movies were directed. You'll know what I mean when you see the movie. Close-ups galore and cheesy filter shots around every corner. That's another big problem I had.
For those who insist this is a thriller, I read thriller writers. Dean Koontz and Ted Dekker write plots with just as big of plot twists as this movie, but their plots are not just the generic: drugs, murder. To me, who's seen infinity better plotting, this is nothing. It's a bowl of cereal. It's fun, it's slightly better than staring at the wall, but it's cereal; you know there is so much better out there to eat. Giving this a perfect score, or a near perfect score, just shows you have never experienced a true, original thriller with a true, original plot twist. And that most likely means you'll have to look somewhere other than the generic, critically-acclaimed top 250.
2/10