The Usual Suspects. The Usual Suspects didn't just make a star out of Kevin Spacey and director Brian Singer, but out of screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, whose exceptional script is now justly regarded as a benchmark in playing to the audience's expectations, then slamming them on their heads. Which brings us around nicely to Way of the Gun, which is not only written by McQuarrie, but is his directorial debut. So many movies casually use gunfire and violence as a background prop that the audience is usually anaesthetised to its effect. As if taking his cue from the searing Omaha Beach landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan, McQuarrie couples every bullet with a brutal visceral punch that can't help but make you wince.
Nothing feels glorified here.
Everybody has shadowy motives and an even more shadowy past, none more so than the two antiheroes. The trouble with a film that dwells so much in this murky underworld, where everyone has an ulterior agenda and casually plot double and triple-crosses, that major plot twists can sail right under your nose without your realising it. The acting is solid, the dialogue witty and the gunplay downright dangerous. And the soundtrack's terrific.