Film Review: The Usual Suspects (1995)

(source: tmdb.org)

Success of Quentin Tarantino in mid 1990s gave huge boost to American independent cinema, at least those film makers willing to make gangster films with low budget and plenty of creativity. Among those that benefited the trend the most were authors of The Usual Suspects, 1995 film directed by Bryan Singer.

The plot begins one night at port of San Pedro, California where a ship becomes site of extremely bloody confrontation between rival groups of criminals. The event left 27 people dead and the only two survivors are badly burned Hungarian gangster and Verbal Kint (played by Kevin Spacey), small time confidence artist arrested over weapon possession. Dave Kujan (played by Chaz Palminteri) is US Customs agent who investigates event and he starts to interrogate Kint. Kint explains that everything began six weeks earlier in New York City when he was brought to police lineup as potential suspect for alleged truck hijacking. Four other suspects were hardened and experienced criminals – Fred Fenster (played by Benicio del Toro), Michael McManus (played by Stephen Baldwin), Todd Hockney (played by Kevin Pollak) and Dean Keaton (played by Gabriel Byrne). Four men, while they are kept together in cell, begin plotting actual crime and Keaton, who used to be a policeman, reluctantly agrees to take part in robbery of jewel smuggler protected by his corrupt colleague. They travel to California to fence the loot, but their contact wants them to make another robbery which goes very wrong. It turns out that the they are being manipulated by mysterious, demonic and semi-legendary Turkish crime lord known as Keyser Söze.

Script was written by Christopher McQuarrie, film maker who would later become very successful working with Tom Cruise. He took inspiration from various sources that range from Casablanca (title was borrowed from one of that film’s dialogue lines) to Reservoir Dogs, another film about group of diverse criminals gathered for ill-fated heist. But The Usual Suspects is, at the end of the day, rather original film that delivers interesting, fascinating story with sharply drawn characters, non-linear narration and various twists, including the ending which is deliberately made ambiguous and until this time subject of various discussions on Internet. Great deal of credit for that should also go to Bryan Singer, director who tried very hard and succeeded in making The Usual Suspects as different from Tarantino’s films as possible. He handled relatively low budget very well, maintained the rapid pace of the plot and kept audience’s attention towards the end of the film. Unsurprisingly, mainstream Hollywood took notice and this film was important stepping stone towards Singer’s career heights with X-Men series.

Another important ingredient for this film’s success is the cast. It was made mostly of character actors or those who, like young Stephen Baldwin, were at the time best known for their work in independent cinema. McQuarrie’s characters have very little background, but they are played by great talents who can extract a lot even from relatively little material. This is especially so with actors playing ill-fated group of criminals, like Benicio del Toro who adds unusual speech patterns to character of Fenster. But the most impressive performance belongs to Kevin Spacey, who was at the time establishing himself as genuine Hollywood star. Role of Verbal Kint played important part in that process. He starts as crippled and weak conman forced to use his brains instead of brawns, later transforms into pathetic wreck before leaving the audience with huge and tantalising question mark. Some of his dialogue lines in films became popular throughout the years and source of many Internet memes. Although the old style music score by John Ottman (who also worked as film’s editor) seems somewhat anachronistic and distracting, The Usual Suspects, which was awarded by Oscars for Spacey and McQuarrie, is still a very good film that could be recommended to viewers who like old fashioned mystery mixed with good acting.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)