Movie Review-The Usual Suspects (1995)

Title: The Usual Suspects
Director: Bryan Singer
Casting: Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri
General Rating: 8.7/10

Review:

I think The Usual Suspects is one of the best mystery thrillers in the world. It contains one of the greatest endings ever seen in any film. When I first saw this film, I understood 85% of the film. I had to watch it again, to recap on what happened earlier. After the second time i watched it, I realized this is a Superb movie with a fabulous twist. I have now seen this film about 20 times and seems to get better every time i watch it. Kevin Spacey delivers the greatest performance in his career. Gabriel is great, Benecio delivers a great performance with humour. Stephen is quite good in his best film. Pollak was impressive, Chazz Palminteri is a Superb underrated actor. Chazz looks ultimately smart and supposingly is a intelligent investigator. But Spacey turns out to be 10 steps ahead. Superb, brilliant and any other great ways to describe this film.

Kint, physically disabled and emotionally disturbed, is himself a desperate, down-on-his luck, petty criminal whose chief talent seems to be getting mixed up with and attaching himself to more talented criminals. His latest 'friend' - Keating (Byrne) is a brilliant but depressive thief who is trying to straighten his life out for a woman lawyer he has fallen for. But along with the other 'usual suspects' - expert safe crackers, con men and sociopaths (possibly the best performance of Stephen Baldwin's career thus far) all - Keating is swept up into agreeing to do 'one final job'. In a fine piece of character interpetation, Byrne plays denial to the hilt telling himself that this job, if successful, could end his life in crime permanently. 


These expert thieves, con men and killers meet in a bogus police line-up one night and from that point on, they are bound together under the control of Soze until they either succeed or fail in the crime he has laid before them.


Soze has been betrayed, whether directly or indirectly, by each of these men, and he leaves them all no choice. Accept the crime plan or die. They accept, knowing that their odds of success are, to say the least, very limited.


The entire feeling of this film shifts radically from the action of the main plot (described in Kint's narrative) and the narrative itself (Kint's interrogation). While this may look simply like a clever piece of film work, it is actually a very brilliant plot device, as both story lines are finally united in the stunning and brilliant finish.


While I am not usually a ready fan of mysteries, and even less interested in thrillers, this film was pure entertainment from start to finish.


Director Singer has established himself as a pioneer in ensemble cast direction, and this film alone (his third) should have awarded him that title.


The performances are, without exception, flawless. While flawlessness or some approximation of it is something I generally expect from people like Spacey, Byrne, and Del Toro, many of the folks in this film very much surprised me. I now watch out for folks like Kevin Pollak, for example. Without detracting from the performers whatsoever, some credit for the stunning quality of the performances must go to the director, editor, script and cinematography team. This film makes them all look positively great.


I was bitterly disappointed by the fact that this film did not take many Academy Awards in its release year. While I realize that the academy's choices do not always reflect quality or achievement, I prefer to maintain at least a superficial guise of hopefulness. The fact that Usual Suspects did not win for editing was the biggest shock. I can not think of a better piece of editing. 

My rating: 10/10