Review of The Usual Suspects

Rating: 10/10 (21 February 2014)

With twists, turns, and an unforgettable climax, The Usual Suspects, directed by Bryan Singer is a fantastic movie. It is a bona fide classic of the crime genre. This low budget thriller was able to capture the attention of audiences worldwide with a surprise ending that leaves viewers with more questions than answers. This movie is layered with a complex plot generating intrigue. While the complexity of the film, enthralled most, some viewers may be left with an unfavorable view of the film due to the complexity; but for the cerebral viewer, it delivers intrigue, action, and a clever thought out plot captivating the viewer to the end. I believe that this is precisely the audience that Bryan Singer sought and delivered to with his grand design. It lends itself to multiple viewings to dissect the plot. The directing in the movie parallels to that of a Quentin Tarantino movie, with cold blooded, ruthless, characters, violence, and gore filled scenes. Through the use of clever flashback, the movie seems so much bigger that what it actually is. All that really happens during the movie is that Roger " Verbal" Kint completes his testimony with Dave Kujan, a detective following a hunch. The movie follows Verbal's testimony, going through the events and with details being filled in as Kujan asks for clarification. Kujan thought there was more to the story than met the eye, and Verbal, played by Kevin Spacey gave Kujan all he could ask for and more. Throughout the whole movie Spacey's brilliant acting convinces the audience almost pity Verbal, who is a cripple with cerebral palsy and a bad limp. This pity for Verbal only makes the ending even more satisfying, where everything that the audience had come to believe throughout the first 100 minutes of film becomes unraveled within the last five. This movie leaves one with more questions than answers, and many holes in the story are left to the imagination, in my opinion only making this story more intriguing. The Usual Suspects was a relatively low budget movie, with production costs around six million dollars. In comparison, another movie from 1995, Cutthroat Island cost 98 million dollars to produce. In terms of grossing, The Usual Suspects grossed over 23 million dollars in the US alone. while the astronomical budget Cutthroat Island only grossed a little over a measly 18 million dollars worldwide. One may be asking 'why does this matter'? I believe that this matters because production costs are one of the limiting factors of being a director. Bryan Singer was able to produce a captivating movie in an era that was already over-saturated with great crime thrillers made in the early 1990's, with a budget that would leave some directors at a loss. By other great crime fillers I am talking about Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, and Goodfellas to name a few. Although Singer did a standup job filming the movie, he cannot take full credit for this masterpiece. The scriptwriter Christopher McQuarrie actually won the best original screenplay at the academy awards, only further exemplifying the quality of this movie. Christopher McQuarrie was not the only one from the movie The Usual Suspects to win an academy award. Kevin Spacey gave the performance of a lifetime playing Verbal Kint, and was awarded the best supporting actor at the academy awards in 1995 (The Usual Suspects). Verbal has a lot more to him than meets the eye, and throughout the entire movie one can tell there is something off about him. Verbal is a cripple with cerebral palsy, a criminal, and is told repeatedly throughout the movie that he isn't intelligent. Kevin Spacey sells the part, allowing the audience to put verbal in a box as a sorry criminal deserving nothing but pity, and almost allowing the audience to empathize with Verbal for having been drawn into detective Kujan's office. This feeling of empathy is completely replaced by a mixture of awe and confusion by the end of this movie. As previously mentioned, scriptwriter Christopher McQuarrie won the best original screenplay at the academy awards . This movie was extremely complex, too confusing in the opinion of some viewers, including film critic legend Roger Ebert, who unfortunately gave this film only 1.5 stars out of four and named this movie to his 50 most hated films of all time list. The reason for the complexity was out of design, in my opinion, as the story Verbal crafted was not really important. This is revealed at the end of the movie, when Kujan realizes that Verbal is actually Kaiser Söze, and that the entire testimony had been fabricated based on various words and pictures that were in his office. This crazy ending is the reason that McQuarrie won the award, and is also the reason that I enjoy this movie so much. In an instant, this movie transforms from being a confusing crime thriller, into a masterpiece, leaving the it to the imagination of the viewer to decipher if there was any truth to verbal Kint's testimony. This Film has stood the test of time, and can now be considered a crime thriller classic. The surprise ending, the acting, and the directing all worked in harmony to produce one of my favorite movies of all time. This movie gets a 10/10 in my book, and should be on the list of anybody that likes good twist ending.