A movie whose
name is taken from a line in the old classic Casablanca, The Usual Suspects is
about an interrogation gone wrong. The movie is very hard to piece 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
watch the movie again to make sure I didn’t miss anything — that’s 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 his former
supervisor, Keyser Sume, and the last name Söze is Turkish, which is translated
as "talk too much."
The
interrogation scene was shot first, and it ran for six days. The rest of the
movie was put together after that, and editing was the grand touch that made
this mystery thriller such a great movie to see.
The movie's plot
is about the interrogation of a small-time conman named Roger
"Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), who is one of the two survivors of a
heist gone wrong, resulting in a fire on a ship. He tells the interrogator the
series of events that led him and four other criminals to the boat.
These 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 becomes more complex, the
interrogator connects the dots and thinks he understands the story, only to get
the shocker of his life when he releases Kint, believing he was used by the
other four.
Made with a $6
million production budget, the movie recouped its production cost and more. The
well-crafted screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie earned 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 Suspects is a fine film, well-developed to push the imagination of the viewer. The unexpected ending is the cherry on top of this delicious masterpiece, and one thing is sure: you’ll be asking for seconds after you’ve seen it the first time.
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