A extraordinary crime thriller that will leave you speechless

Rating: 9/10 (27 December 2013)

My first comment is that if you have not seen this movie, stop reading now and go and watch it. It is phenomenal the first time you see it. Do not read any more as what I write will give away too much of the plot.
My friend's comment about this movie was that when he saw it in the cinema, at the end everybody left in dead silence. The ending of it so shocked them that there was literally nothing to say. The Usual Suspects is a movie with a brilliant twist and flows constantly through to the end. On TV it sucks because you simply lose the flow of the movie as the adds interrupt it.
It is impossible to describe the plot without giving too much away, so I will simply say what happens at the beginning and a few other things about the themes in the movie. It is not a thematically deep movie, but it is one that the characters work well and the plot is very well constructed.
It begins with an explosion on the LA waterfront and lots of corpses are dragged out of the water. One man, a cripple, is found alive and is taken in for questioning, but he has to be released due to some immunity he has. Anyway, the story is told through the mouth of this cripple, and seems legit.
It begins with the hijacking of a truck in Queens and five people - the usual suspects, are brought in for questioning. Of course they have nothing on them and their lawyer forces the police to release them. Angered at the police's treatment of them, they decide to bust open a conspiracy where the police offer taxi services to criminals.
One of the lines in this movie shows the idea that once somebody is a criminal, they are always a criminal. It is the line that says, "you get to a point where you no longer have any rights - no matter how you try to live a straight life, they will always come after you to pin something on you." This is the story of Dean Keaton. He was a cop who went corrupt but now is trying to make good with his life. Unfortunately the cops won't let him do that. Not only will the police not leave him alone, but when he tries to make good, his past always comes back.
The police believe that Keaton is not just a bad guy, but the bad guy. They are so obsessed with making sure that Keaton is dead that they completely miss the real person whom they are looking for and this person simply walks right out from under their noses while they try to force them to admit that it was all Keaton's fault.
Another theme is that we are never truly free - there is always somebody that is in control, and not only that but what ever we do always affects somebody, and in some cases somebody whom we don't even realise. All of the suspects in the movie did something that upset the wrong person, and they did not even intend on upsetting him, they simply did not think about their actions.
Finally there is a somewhat relative message in this movie. On one hand, things are not always what they seem, but on the other side, the truth is really only somebody's subjective interpretation of events. Even then, we can generally not accept what people say because there is always a subjective intention behind it.
The Usual Suspects is a brilliant movie. It is not as good the second time round as you already know what will happen, but for the first time, it is simply leave you speechless.