Best crime movie. Ever.

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2001)

(spoilers) The Usual Suspects is one of those rare movies that comes along and takes advantage of all of the expectations that audiences develop as a result of an overabundance of formula films. One of the things that really sets The Usual Suspects apart from other crime films is that it has an excellent story, but it is also very uniquely presented. The whole film is told in a series of flashbacks by Verbal Kint, performed flawlessly by Kevin Spacey. The script has the rare quality of being extremely intricate but also very involving, you never get lost despite the tremendous amount of detail that the story has.
(spoilers) Benecio Del Toro shows up in one of his earlier roles as Fred Fenster, the character that, as Brad Pitt has stated, makes it okay to be incomprehensible (Fenster influenced Pitt's performance in the excellent film Snatch). Gabriel Byrne is the perfect actor to play the part of Dean Keaton, the usual suspect who doesn't quite fit in with the rest and who is temporarily revealed to be the fearful Keyser Sosey. Stephen Baldwin makes a good criminal, and his performance is very effective. And Kevin Pollack did a very good job as well. On a trivial point, you'll notice that Keaton's hotel room in The Usual Suspects is the same room that was used as Quentin Tarantino's hotel room in the hilarious black comedy, Four Rooms.
The ending of The Usual Suspects has become known to be one of the best endings to a film in years, especially because of the shock value. Not only is it entirely unexpected, but it also reveals the ingenuity of the script, especially when we realize that Verbal fabricated the entire story, using names and locations that he simply read off of the wall in the room of the police station where he was interrogated. This ending has become famous enough to be re-created in a number of spoof movies. It was very amusingly done in Wrongfully Accused, but unnecessarily done in the idiotic Scary Movie. The Usual Suspects is an excellent film. It has great performances, good direction, and a flawlessly presented story. It's too bad that it's so rare for a movie to have so much thought put into it, so it's nice to see one come along every once in a while that just seems to do everything right.