The Usual Suspect (1995)

The Usual Suspect (1995)

10/10

Starring

Gabriel Byrne

Kevin Spacey

Chazz Palminteri

Stephen Baldwin

Directed by Bryan Singer

A movie whose name is gotten from a line in the old classic, Casablanca “The Usual Suspect“ is about an interrogation gone wrong. The movie is very hard to connect together, and the masterful twist ending for some did more harm than good, but for me, it was the thriller of the whole movie. The fact that after the movie is over I still have to sit down and think about it, connecting the dots and wanting to have another re-run of the movie to be sure that I don’t miss any dot, that is the reason why this movie is a masterpiece.

Written by Christopher McQuarrie, the Keyser Söze character is based on the accounts of John List, an accountant who murdered his family in 1971 and then disappeared for almost 20 years by assuming a new identity before he was eventually apprehended in 1989. McQuarrie got the name Keyser Söze from the name of his former supervisor Keyser Sume, and the last name Söze is Turkish which is translated as "talk too much."

The Interrogation scene was first shot, and it ran for 6 days, and the rest of the movie was put together next, and editing was the grand touch that made this mystery thriller that good a movie to see.

The movie plot is about the interrogation of a small-time con man named Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), who is a one of the few two survivors of a heist gone wrong that resulted to a fire on a ship. He tells the interrogator the series of events that led him and four other criminals to the boat.

This series of events are shown to the viewer in the form of flashbacks as Kint narrates his story to the overconfident interrogator. As the story goes on and gets complex, the interrogator connects the dots and explains the story better to Kint, only to get the shocker of his life when he releases Kint believing he was used by the other four.

Done with a 6 million dollar production budget, the movie recouped its production cost and more; the well crafted screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie gained him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Kevin Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the criminal Keyser Söze.

The Usual suspect is a fine film, well-developed to push the imaginations of the viewer, the unexpected ending is the cream on the top of this delicious masterpiece and one thing is sure, you will be asking for seconds after you are done seeing it the first time.