Directed by: Bryan Singer
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palmintieri, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro, Pete Posthlewaite
After three viewings of this movie, I'm sorry, I just don't get the hoopla. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and has been lauded as an influential, (dare it be said great), crime film. Kevin Spacey also won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this film. It's stylish I suppose, but the film slogs its way to its now famous trick ending that really wasn't that tricky. If you haven't seen the film, there will be spoilers here Although if you haven't seen it in the 18 years since its release, you're not in any hurry and a spoiler won't bug you.
Throughout the film, a detective, Dave Kujan (Palmintieri) is questioning a witness to a heist gone horribly wrong. There was at attempted heist followed by an explosion on the docks in, I believe, Santa Monica. The witness is "Verbal" Kint (Spacey) who is the opposite of most people being interrogated; he can't seem to shut up. He is given to long, meandering testimony that amazingly doesn't cause the detective to zone out. A lot of praise is due Kujan for his ability to focus much better than I did on Kint's long-winded answers.
A suspect (or maybe even the ringleader or the person being heisted) is the enigmatic Keyser Soze, who is given almost a mythical stature to those who have heard of him. He's a scary guy too. Kint describes a story in which Soze kills mobsters attempting to harm his family. Soze then kills his family I guess to show that he has no qualms about killing anybody. It's no wonder Kint doesn't want to get on the wrong side of Soze, even if no one has ever seen him.
There isn't much here I found myself caring about. There's a bunch of goofy criminals thrown together for a heist that goes spectacularly wrong. It became apparent to me following the laws of screenplays who Soze must be. It doesn't take much thinking considering everyone else associated with the crime dies. All of this is told in flashbacks, so anyone who is actually shocked when Soze's identity is revealed must not have seen that many movies before.
But when the surprise is revealed, I'm assuming we're seeing Soze. But is that actually the case? Or are we just seeing Kint getting over on Kujan and worming his way out of a predicament? My overall feeling when watching The Usual Suspects comes down to two words: Yeah? And?
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