Suspense with a shocking twist ending

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2010)

Director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie team up to create a fascinating film that delighted audiences beyond measure with a thrilling storyline culminating with a complex and shocking twist.
The movie shows five known criminals Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Fred Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey) and Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak) in a police line-up as suspects in a crime involving a hijacked truck in New York City. They are dragged into the police station because they are the usual suspects.
They are not found guilty but are put in a cell together. While they are waiting to be bailed out of jail they conclude the police are at fault, so they plan to get revenge with an entangled crime scheme. Dean Keaton who is a cop gone bad and a conviction is desperately trying to change his life. However, the more time he spends in the cell with the other criminals he is convinced to participate in one last crime.
There is the omnipresence of a criminal mastermind by the name of Keyser Soze. They all feel that they have wronged Soze in some way and must pay back. The payback involves a cocaine heist and 91 million dollars in drug money that results in a boat explosion on a California pier and twenty seven people dead. There are two survivors, a badly burned Hungarian gangster Kobayaski (Pete Postlethwaite) and Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey) who appears crippled. Although they feel the influence of Soze, he is not revealed and the audience is left in suspense. The dark burned body and heavy accent of Kobayaski can lead the audience to believe that it is Soze.
Roger a conman gives his account of what happened in a narrative inserted in the chronological structure of the film to David Kujan (Chazz Palaminteri), special agent investigating the explosion.
A similar movie is "LA Confidental" starring Kevin Spacey. This movie also has a twist at when the crook is identified at the end of the movie. The motif supports the plot showing actors in police station, crime scenes and police guarded hospital. The lighting was low-key which heightens the suspense of the film.
All five criminals think they've constructed the perfect pay back crime. What they don't realize is that they were all set up and that someone has been master minding the entire scheme from the beginning including bringing them all into the police station for questioning. This takes another twist and the audience can only speculate about the person who is controlling the operation.