Possibly The Greatest Crime Drama Ever Made

Rating: 10/10 (9 February 2012)

Rarely does a film of any genre rise to the level of perfection achieved in The Usual Suspects. The ultimate goal of any whodunit is to keep the audience guessing right up until the very end, perhaps even never quite answering the question with absolute certainty. This movie hits the proverbial bullseye with mind boggling precision. Someone jacks a truck loaded with guns in New York City but police have no leads. So they bring in five of the Big Apple's best known thieves to shake the underworld's tree. But unbeknownst to the police, or our "suspects," there are greater forces at play. When it's all said and done, LAPD, NYPD, and the feds are left sifting through an abandoned cargo ship in an L.A. harbor with lots of bodies but not much else. All they have to go on is the shaky story of a talkative small-time crook named Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey, who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for the role), and a dying victim of the shootout who claims to have seen the devil incarnate on the ship, a legendary criminal kingpin whose name sends shivers up the spines of police and lawbreakers alike. It may not sound like much, but every aspect of this film comes off so astoundingly well, from the morose cinematography and foreboding score, to the impeccable performances by its stars (Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, and Benicio Del Toro as the "suspects" and Chazz Palminteri as the federal agent trying to piece their story together), The Usual Suspects concludes with a classic stunner that only adds to its reputation as one of the greatest crime dramas ever filmed, if not the best ever.