The Usual Suspects Movie Trailer. The tough guys of “The Usual Suspects” radiate confidence in their own movie-mythic possibilities, secure in the knowledge that they are this year’s Reservoir Dogs. And it’s not even a stretch, since Bryan Singer’s immensely stylish film noir incorporates so many good masculine roles and such terse, literate conversational sparring. With these advantages, “The Usual Suspects” goes straight to cult status without quite touching one important base: the audience’s emotions. This movie finally isn’t anything more than an intricate feat of gamesmanship, but it’s still quite something to see.
And it has been made to be seen twice, with a plot guaranteed to create minor bewilderment the first time around. Mr. Singer and the screenwriter, Christopher McQuarrie, whose collaboration on “Public Access” won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival two years ago, include a great many hints and nuances that won’t be noticeable until you know which Suspect bears the most watching. Suffice it to say that this film’s trickiest role is handled with supreme slyness. And that acting of that caliber, plus a whopper of an ending, compensates for some inevitable head-scratching on the way home.
It’s no surprise that this film’s poster art, featuring five intriguing miscreants in a police lineup, was an important early aspect of its creation. Beyond following the demands of an unusually dense mystery plot, Mr. Singer and Mr. McQuarrie have also worked overtime at generating visual interest in their story. Even the jail cell looks eye-catchingly sleek when Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Hockney (Kevin Pollak), Fenster (Benicio Del Toro) and Roger (Verbal) Kint (Kevin Spacey) are locked up together one fateful evening. “It was all the cops’ fault,” Verbal later remembers. “You don’t put guys like that in a room together.” Not unless you want the endless set of high-testosterone conversational stand-offs that help keep “The Usual Suspects” perpetually on its toes.
The five New York cellmates, who seem to have been rounded up at random, are soon embroiled in a crime scheme that we know will lead, since the film is structured in flashback, to an explosion on a pier in California. In the aftermath of those fireworks, the story is being unraveled by three separate investigators (Chazz Palminteri, Dan Hedaya and Giancarlo Esposito), with the help of Verbal, who has survived to explicate the tale.
It involves figures as wildly mysterious as Keyser Soze, the fierce, off-camera Hungarian who is referred to as “the devil himself” and whose very name seems to give the film makers a noirish thrill. Keyser Soze is as fabulously improbable as Pete Postlethwaite’s Kobayashi, whose dark makeup and Pakistani accent just dare the viewer to call his bluff.
It ultimately isn’t best to do so, since “The Usual Suspects” has become so exhaustingly convoluted by the time it ends that some of its unraveled threads lead nowhere. But the film’s secrets are also held together by dialogue of quiet ferocity: “Keyser always said, ‘I believe in God and I’m afraid of Him.’ Well, I believe in God and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.”
Mr. Singer has assembled a fine ensemble cast of actors who can parry such lines, and whose performances mesh effortlessly despite their exaggerated differences in demeanor. (Mr. Baldwin’s mad-dog jokester, for instance, matches Mr. Byrne’s elegant businessman without missing a beat.) Without the violence or obvious bravado of “Reservoir Dogs,” these performers still create strong and fascinatingly ambiguous characters. Mr. Spacey, so good in “Swimming With Sharks” this year, joins Mr. Palminteri to give the interrogation scenes a particular charge.
“The Usual Suspects” also benefits from Newton Thomas Sigel’s handsome, moody cinematography, and from John Ottman’s services as both editor and composer. His brooding score effectively summons Bernard Herrmann. And his editing of the film’s finale is gratifyingly sensible, a lot more so than the secrets being revealed.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Starring: Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite, Kevin Spacey, Suzy Amis, Benicio del Toro, Giancarlo Esposito, Christine Estabrook
Screenplay by: Christopher McQuarrie
Production Design by: Howard Cummings
Cinematography by: Newton Thomas Sigel
Film Editing by: John Ottman
Costume Design by: Louise Mingenbach
Set Decoration by: Sara Andrews
Art Direction by: David Lazan
Music by: John Ottman
MPAA Rating: R for violence and a substantial amount of strong language.
Distributed by: Gramercy Pictures
Release Date: August 16, 1995
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