Flawed, but fascinating

Rating: Null/10 (22 October 2001)

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

First of all, I have to confess that I had inadvertently found out the answer to "Who is Keyser Soze?" scant days before seeing the movie for the first time. Which makes it impossible to watch the film correctly, where you are made to believe that Gabriel Byrne is Keyser Soze. We see Keaton being killed at the start, and I believed it because I knew he wasn't Soze.
However the montage by which the detective realises the truth was extremely well done, and it was still worth watching the movie for that.
The film has three flaws: Keyser Soze is built up throughout the film as being "The Devil Himself", but nothing he does is any worse than anything the other characters do: when they hit Kobayashi, Baldwin casually kills the two bodyguards; they all machine-gun a number of Hungarians (who could be simple sailors for all they know). The Rat is cowering in his cabin, more frightened of Keyser Soze than anything else. Well, if he's frightened to die, a huge gun-battle is in progress and its odds-on he's going to die anyway. Then Soze actually turns up and, um, shoots him. Big deal. The story of Soze killing his own family is just that - a story (whatever the ending).
The second flaw is when they do things for filmic effect rather than good sense. This is particularly notable in the scene where they hit Kobayashi. They are careful to take Kobayashi to an empty office so they can talk to him before killing him (a courtesy not extended to the two bodyguards). He is thus given the opportunity to talk his way out of it. Then the cons follow him up to the office on the top floor. Then they presumably make their way home. In all this time, there is a bloodstained lift with two dead bodies in it!
The final flaw is that the whole "end sequence" of attacking the boat is one of those long sequences of men running around in the dark and shooting people. It's very common in action films (particularly of the heist type) and I think it should cease. The audience don't know where they are, who's shooting at what, what the battle plan is. When the whole point is who was where and when, I think the action needs to be made a lot clearer.