Somewhat wonderful?

Rating: 5/10 (24 March 2014)

Usual Suspects made a long career for Bryan Singer, and an even larger reputation for itself. A crime-thriller that supposedly pioneered the 'shocking' twist, long before Shyamalan came on the scene. But what about watching a movie without any pre-conceived notions? I took the time to slip it into the DVD player with my old man besides me. After 2 hours of convoluted trickery, he was less than impressed with the film's main plot device. "Well that was clever..... but is that it?"
With a combination of tropes (the dog being the mastermind, crossed with unreliable narrator) the writers try to keep the audience guessing, but somewhat superficially, as the story gradually winds down to a less than mind-blowing finale. The direction is flashy and Scorsese-lite, with bright lighting, wide angles, and mysterious music to let the viewer feel he is being led astray. It works for the most part, but I felt like my buttons were being pressed unwillingly by the filmmaker, to make the mystery seem thicker than it was.
The other problem was the narrator-bound narrative. It was essential for the plot, but also meant we never peek into the lives of these characters we're supposed to be attached to. The history between them is relegated to expository dialogue, and a love-interest's death is dealt out in an offhand fashion right at the climax. It made me realize that most of the story is built around this twist ending, and the rest of what happened in the film, all the mini-adventures the characters had, the elaborate trail they had been lead on, was all window-dressing to get me to the WOW shocker that had been promised all along.
It's neat, artfully told, smooth film making, but the story seems like it could have been condensed into a 20 minute Twilight Zone episode and left at that. Not a 2 hour feature. My time wasn't exactly wasted, but there wasn't much meat to chew on, thematically or character-wise, and all it left me to ponder upon was a quote hijacked from French poet Charles Baudelair; "The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist." It doesn't exactly scream originality, does it? Shouldn't the writers have to pay copyright material for using another's work?