still very enjoyable despite already knowing the 'famous' twist

Rating: 8/10 (7 September 2010)

Okay, so unfortunately I'm 15 years late in my viewing of 'the usual suspects' and thus the twist had (annoyingly) been revealed to me many times before, against my will. It is this very reason that i kept putting off watching this widely considered masterpiece. Twenty minutes into the film i realised how stupid i was as the knowledge i had of the final scene in no way diluted any enjoyment of this great film. Each character is so well developed and acted with intelligent self awareness (even Stephen Baldwin was great!) that you become immersed in their world. The story becomes more and more intriguing as the film goes on, drip feeding the audience information to keep them guessing and then revealing things that audiences would unlikely guess. My only criticism would be that the twist in fact retrospectively makes the film seem geared entirely towards the twist making a lot of what preceded it feel quite irrelevant, but this is perhaps forgivable as it is a great twist, even if i didn't experience it as a twist!