The Usual Suspects
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Template:Infobox Film The Usual Suspects is a 1995 American movie written by Christopher McQuarrie (who earned an Oscar for the screenplay) and directed by Bryan Singer. It stars Kevin Spacey (who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance), Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Pete Postlethwaite, Benicio Del Toro and Kevin Pollak.
The film, shot on a $4 million budget, did not create much excitement (or box office) during the movie's initial release (even making the list of Roger Ebert's most hated films). Word-of-mouth later made it one of the most highly-regarded of the crime-drama genre. Ten years after its release, it remains in the Top 20 on the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 Movies list.
Roger "Verbal" Kint (Spacey), a small-time con man, is in a police interrogation, and tells his interrogator, Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri), a convoluted story about events leading to a massacre and massive fire that have just taken place on a boat docked at Los Angeles. Using flashback and narration, Verbal's story becomes increasingly complex as he tries to explain, to Kujan's satisfaction, why he and his partners-in-crime were on that boat.
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Plot details
The movie begins with a man being killed on a merchant ship. The murderer has a gold cigarette lighter and twice shoots a victim in the head before using spilled gasoline to incinerate the boat.
The movie cuts to Agent Kujan interrogating Verbal on the status of criminal Dean Keaton, who was involved in the boat fire. Kujan wants to make sure Keaton is dead, and insists that Verbal tells his story, despite the fact that Verbal has already made his statements and been granted immunity.
Five crooks are brought together in a police line-up on trumped-up charges. They are an eclectic bunch: Keaton (Byrne) appears to have gone legit; McManus (Baldwin) and Hockney (Pollak) form an instant rivalry; Verbal himself has cerebral palsy and walks with a limp; and Fenster (Del Toro) talks in such mangled English that, according to DVD bonus material, even the actors themselves had trouble understanding him. One thing is certain: since all of them are guilty of something, they're probably innocent of what they're actually being accused of (hijacking a truck full of firearms).
While in jail, the five suspects join forces to plan an emerald heist (as well as a flipping-off of the NYPD), and though Keaton had planned to stay away from further "work", he finds himself continually involved in the group's criminal activities. Eventually they wind up in California, where they are blackmailed by a lawyer named Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite) into doing a job for someone named Keyser Soze. (Simultaneously to the flashback narrative, an FBI agent receives an eye-witness account of events on the ship - he shouts Soze's name over and over and is eventually coaxed into giving a visual description.) Keaton, Fenster, McManus and Hockney react to Soze's name with a desperation bordering on terror; for his part, Verbal simply wants to know who the man is.
Keyser Soze, as Verbal relates it, is organized crime's version of the monster under the bed. When he was a small-time Turkish dope runner, a rival Hungarian gang tried to seize his territory and business by taking his family hostage. Soze, in response, killed his own family and all (but one) of the threatening gangsters. He then started a crusade against the gang, systematically eliminating their friends, family, children, lovers, parents, and even their homes and businesses before eventually disappearing. He is a criminal mastermind, and his name strikes fear into the heart of hardened criminals. Is he real? Nobody knows. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Back in the narrative, Fenster loses his nerve and bolts; several hours later Kobayashi tells the remaining four how to find his body. After further application of threat, the remaining suspects agree to take on the heist: on a boat docked at San Pedro (the boat from the beginning), two gangs are meeting to finalize the sale of, and then exchange $91 million in cocaine. The suspects are to prevent this from happening, as the sale would be unfortunate for Soze's business. If the suspects wait for the deal to be sealed, they may help themselves to any cash they might stumble upon, but this will require fighting through nearly twice the number of bodyguards.
Image:Kevin spacey usual suspects.jpg Regardless, they opt for this strategy - if they are going to risk their lives, they at least want a payoff. Keaton tells Verbal to stay back and make a run for it if things go wrong, which they do; Keyser Soze himself appears and puts an end to all of the remaining suspects, save Verbal himself. Simultaneous to the narrative, the FBI agent discovers, among the dead from the boat, a man from Soze's organization who was about to hand Soze over to the law. This man has been shot twice in the head, which is Soze's calling card. Furthermore, it is discovered that there were, in fact, no drugs on the boat. Kujan believes that the whole point of the exercise was not to interrupt a dope transaction, but rather for Soze to kill the man who was going to rat him out.
Kujan returns Verbal to the crucial point: is Keaton dead? Verbal is sure: he saw Soze trigger the two headshots (which the audience recognizes from the beginning of the movie). But what was Soze actually shooting at? It is Kujan's belief that Keaton is actually Soze (Keaton had successfully faked his own death two years earlier, to say nothing of Soze's activities), which raises the odd question: why is Verbal, then, even alive? Why did Keaton actually tell him to get lost, if his whole objective was to kill anyone who might turn Keaton/Soze over to the police? No one has any ideas. But, regardless, Verbal's bail has been posted, and he departs with his legal immunity, deciding to take his chances on the street rather than submit to the dubious auspices of the Witness Protection Program.
Verbal receives his personal effects from the jail warden: a gold watch, a gold cigarette lighter, and a pack of cigarettes. Kujan, relaxing in the office he used for the interrogation, suddenly starts to notice details from Verbal's story appearing on objects around the room; most notably, the cups from which they both have been drinking coffee are made by a company called Kobayashi. He scrambles outside, just missing a fax with the artist's impressions of Keyser Soze's face (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the now released Verbal Kint). As Verbal leaves the jail, his limp suddenly disappears. He steps into a waiting Jaguar limo driven by "Mr. Kobayashi" and departs just as Kujan arrives, desperately searching for "the cripple", a man who no longer exists. The credits roll.
Plot Twists
The Usual Suspects includes some major plot twists. Throughout the course of the movie, the plot leads viewers to suspect that Soze is Keaton, with the actual answer hitting hard at the end. The film's idea, according to the extras on the DVD release, was to confuse the audience until the very end, when it finally reveals that Verbal is, in fact, Soze.
Burning Questions
The movie ends with more questions raised than answered. Who exactly is Keyser Söze? And, perhaps more importantly, who is Verbal Kint? Are they one and the same? Unwinding this tangle is difficult, because Kint himself is the source of almost all the information in the movie; he is clearly an unreliable narrator, raising the possibility that everything the audience has just seen and been told is a lie. Even that, however, is not incriminating; Verbal Kint is clearly a consummate liar, but that doesn't mean he's necessarily anyone other than Verbal Kint.
Director Bryan Singer confesses that he's pretty sure Kint is Söze; writer Christopher McQuarrie has said that it's however the viewer decides to interpret it. The gold cigarette lighter Kint retrieves at the end of the movie is prominently featured in the opening scene; the two smoke their cigarettes the same way. Despite this, Gabriel Byrne (Keaton) was pretty sure his character was Söze, at least until he saw the finished movie.
The DVD commentary reveals several interesting moments in the making of the film. During Söze's appearance on the boat, the camera pans across a pile of dock gear as Kint hobbles behind it, but Spacey stops just short and the camera keeps panning. He also had Byrne dress up as Söze for a specific flashback shot, and filmed him firing Söze's signature dual gunshots...despite Byrne's protests that he was shooting his own character. Finally, Singer points out that "söze", in the Turkish dictionary from which he and writer Christopher McQuarrie took the word, is defined as garrulous or talkative. This, combined with the Turkish transliteration of the German Kaiser, leaves us with a verbal king.
Trivia of interest
- The inspiration and title comes from Christopher McQuarrie detailing his new movie to a friend and saying, "It will have the usual suspects in it."
- The expression "the usual suspects" became famous as part of a quote from Casablanca. In the last scene of Casablanca, Captain Renault orders to "Round up the usual suspects!"
- Benicio del Toro's delivery of the line "He'll flip ya'. Flip ya' for real." comes straight from the movie Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1989) about jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. Monk says the line himself.
- The character of Soze is based on murderer John List.
- The manila envelopes containing the characters' personal biographies are handed out in the order the characters die.
- The lineup part was originally written to be a serious scene but the actors had been messing about and laughing so much that Singer actually put the funniest version in.
- According to the DVD commentary, the stolen emeralds are real gemstones on loan for the movie.
- K.S. are the initials of both Keyser Soze, and Kevin Spacey, the actor who played Verbal Kint.
- Punk band Link 80 have a song called "Verbal Kint" on their 17 Reasons album.
- Dean Keaton is also the name of 26th Street in Austin, Texas.
- The line "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." may come from a prose poem in the collection Le Spleen de Paris written by Charles Baudelaire: "Mes chers frères, n'oubliez jamais, quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières, que la plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!"[1].
Cultural references
- In 2004, Marvel Comics released "Identity Disc", a mini-series in which six villians (Deadpool, Vulture, Sandman, Sabretooth, Bullseye and Juggernaut) are forced to work together on behalf of a master criminal. Fans decried the book as a complete rip-off of "The Usual Suspects", complete with the fact that Vulture, having told Nick Fury the entire story, is revealed to have been the mastermind behind the scheme.
- In the sitcom Yes, Dear the two married couples go to counseling to resolve issues. The main character tells a story of "why he needs to have control" which is later proved by the doctor to be a fraud. As he has his wife and two friends fooled, he walks out of the counselors office with a limp (occurring from the alleged cramp in his foot). He walks away with his limp, contesting that he is very emotional from his devulsion about his past. The camera focuses in on his limping foot as he walks away, changing to a regular step (reminicent of Verbal/Soze). The camera then pans up to his face which is now a huge devious grin.
External links
- The script
- {{{2|{{{title|The Usual Suspects}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- "The tale of Keyser Soze"bg:Обичайните заподозрени
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