Great Film that keeps you guessing

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2010)

The movie The Usual Suspects begins at the end. A boat, thought to be carrying drugs, explodes in San Pedro and Dean Keaton (played by Gabriel Byrne) is shot by a mysterious man he called only 'Keyser'. The movie then flashes back to 6 weeks prior to the explosion with the help of a survivor, Roger "Verbal" Kint; a failed hijacking brings our main characters together in a police line-up in New York. Todd Hockney (Kevin Pollak), a known, hijacker; Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin), a professional thief with anger issues; Fred Fenster (Benicio del Toro), is McManus' partner whose English is garbled at best; Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a corrupt cop who has gone straight and Verbal a con artist who happens to have cerebral palsy. The movie cuts back and forth between the investigation in California and Verbal's recounting of the last six weeks to detectives Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) and Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito). Verbal recounts how McManus convinced the group to join forces to pull off robbery that causes a number of corrupt NYC cops to be exposed. But the heist leads to its own set of problems. They are blackmailed by Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), a lawyer who claims to work for infamous criminal Keyser Söze and forced to work together to stop a boat smuggling millions of dollars worth of cocaine. The events that took place on the boat lead the story back to the beginning with the explosion. As most of the story is told by Verbal, as a viewer you have to have a certain level of trust in Verbal. I feel the film uses Verbal's cerebral palsy and is voice-over confessions as a means to gain the audiences trust. Before walking into the line-up scene, Verbal says via voice-over "It didn't make sense that I'd be here, I mean, these guys were hardcore hijackers, but there I was. At that point I wasn't scared. I knew I hadn't done anything they could do me for. Besides, it was fun. I got to make like I was notorious." This voice over, combined with Verbal's non threatening physical appearance, makes him easy to believe and underestimate. I think the more recent movie 'Lucky Number Slevin' borrows from the ideas and themes in The Usual Suspects. The defining character in Lucky Number Slevin is unassuming throughout the movie and you believe he is just a victim of circumstance until the very end. Both movies also have a similar lighting configuration. Many scenes in both films are shot with dim lighting to create a feel of danger and mystery. The Usual Suspects uses a story-telling technique that was rare in 1995 and it made a huge impact when it was released. The use of flashbacks and voice-overs provide the film with the perfect opportunity to misdirect the audience and lead to a compelling plot twist.