Os Suspeitos

One day in a bookshop, I flipped through a book entitled: "the movies of the nineties" and this movie wasn't included! How can a book specialized in cinema skip such a milestone of the last decade? Any movie buff, any cinema critic must have considered the nineties a fruitful era for the American thriller. According to one's tastes, some will say that the best thriller of the nineties is "Silence of the Lambs" (1991). For others it will be "Pulp Fiction" (1994) while others will praise to the skies "Se7en" (1995). For me, the pinnacle is this present movie, "the Usual Suspects" (1995) with its staggering story (to put it mildly). It's a sensational debut for Bryan Singer which enabled to put him on the map. With a little help from his accomplice Christopher McQuarrie, he signed an unparalleled gem in the landscape of the American thriller, even the whole cinema.

The average viewer who watches "the Usual Suspects" for the first time might think that the whole crew concocted him a meandering story with as a leading thread, Spacey's convoluted story. At the end of the projection, he may feel puzzled and will probably wish to watch the movie a second time. He won't regret it and Singer and McQuarrie will rejoice at it. Their masterwork gains by several repeated viewings to appreciate the subtleties of a rich movie with a convoluted construction which will take its seemingly definitive form in the five last minutes. To watch "the Usual Suspects" is like gathering the pieces of an intriguing puzzle, a little like any other suspenseful movie but in the case of Singer's flick, one will never really be able to completely end it. So many things happen in less than two hours that we are never really sure of what we watch and this is reinforced by a breathtaking unexpected twist at the end which makes our assumptions falter. Singer and McQuarrie take a mischievous delight in taking the viewer in their nebulous scenario and to follow it according to Spacey's declarations and it's obvious that they raise more questions than answers. It's up to the viewer to make his imagination work and to bring his thoughts on the film. This is what inspires its pernicious charm.

From Spacey's story, the authors developed a top quality script, set with clockwork precision. Singer's directorial style virtually evolutes on the razor's edge and conveys an increasing tension. It is filled with ingenious visual ideas and served by fluid camera movements. Singer was in his early thirties when he shot his film but it presents the signs of a seasoned author. There's also a tight editing and a unsettling score which cement the movie in its place of winner. More remarkable, the authors pull off with gusto to increase the audience's curiosity throughout the film in spite of a somewhat deliberate confusion and the interest won't weaken until the end which constitute the apex: an unexpected twist which will leave the audience speechless once they understood it. In Singer's flick, it doesn't disappoint because there are little but noticeable visual and verbal clues which justify it. However, it has something unsettling. We believe that we are at the end of the maze but there's more to the picture than meets the eye. Maybe this "coup de theatre" veils one more truth. Maybe also the shrewdest ones will have guessed it but the result is the same for any viewer: Singer puts a baffled spectator in his pocket.

Singer and Quarrie show a perfect master in the domain of the film noir: an ominous atmosphere, nocturnal scenes which stay rooted in the mind and a deep psychology of certain characters which give more substance to the film. Considering the last point, the character of Gabriel Byrne is the most interesting one: a former crooked cop who seemingly redeemed himself in catering but caught up by his past and forced to come back to work. I personally think that Byrne is the stand-out of the topflight cast the movie boasts. But don't neglect the other members. Kevin Spacey pocketed a deservedly Oscar in 1996 and the rest of the cast doesn't stay on the bench. Maybe Singer grants a little shallow attention to the three others baddies in the gang but in a way it's necessary to underscore the fact that they're lousy gangsters embroiled in a infernal spiral and unable to perceive what lies beneath all this. Pete Postlewhaite and Chazz Palminteri make their scenes count too.

A riveting storytelling, a painstaking flash-back, a tight and first-class directing, a thoughtful twist, a topnotch cast, "the Usual Suspects" includes almost everything a director would sell his soul for. Everything contributes to make it a stalwart model in the suspenseful movie and the whole cinema. After the first vision, be prepared for mental gymnastics and for a second screening...

The interrogation, the lineup, and the story telling are all intricate to this film and really is what makes this a great movie and a 90's classic.

The lineup scene is iconic and absolutely a fan favourite no doubt. Each characters personality is defined in that one sentence.

Kevin Spacey gives a heck of a performance and for me it's definitely his best.

I couldn't help but set rather high expectations for 'The Usual Suspects' as I went into watching this. I knew this was no action movie or any of the crap we get nowadays. This was true cinema! I was excited 'The Usual Suspects' is a mystery film about what cargo was on board the ship when it was destroyed and the events leading up to it as we are told from the only known survivor of that accident.

Around 45-50 minutes into the movie, I was starting to find myself a bit tired and thought the movie may perhaps have dragged along just a bit. I was becoming rather disappointed. Then the film truly began to change in such a way that I find it rather hard to explain. The characters began to get a little more entertaining, the pacing certainly began to pick up, the dialogue was getting more interesting and overall, I was more excited.

Then comes the amazing final twenty minutes with the plot twist and the story finally closing in perfectly, making the story more understandable. However, the final 5 minutes of the movie are some of the best moments of movie ever made and that is the ultimate plot twist which surprised the hell out of me! It was a cheering end to what ended as a great movie and a movie I would be more than happy to check out again and again! A-

The Usual Suspects is two movies in one. Enjoyable the first time you watch it, even more enjoyable the second time round. The first viewing asks questions that are answered in an `I could kick myself' moment in the final few minutes, and the second viewing is interesting because when you know the answers, the film becomes that much clearer. It requires a certain amount of commitment, though. Be warned, if you stop concentrating for a moment then the remaining running time of the movie will be spent trying to figure out how what you missed has lead to what you are now watching.

It concerns the story of five felons brought in by the police for a line-up and how those same felons reluctantly end up working for the mysterious and ghost-like Keyser Soze: a legend among the criminal fraternity, a man who no-one has seen and lived, a man so dangerous that he is thought to be the devil himself.you get the idea. The plot is rather intricate so I shan't bother to explain it here but it does rather make me think that Christopher McQuarrie, the writer, kept going to the office in the morning with yet another complexity to add that he thought up the night before. That's not to say it doesn't work, far from it, but it does leave you reeling from the sheer amount of information and names thrown at you from the offset.

Gabriel Byrne is good, but not flawless, as the tortured Dean Keaton who is torn between his career as a criminal and his forlorn attempt at trying to go straight, but his relationship with uptown lawyer Edie Finneran (Suzy Amis) is badly explored and I never felt it gave motive enough for his actions throughout the movie. Kevin Spacey is wonderful as the crippled Roger 'Verbal' Kint and is effective with the results both cunning and tragic. The real star of the movie, however, is a strangely accented Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi, supposedly Keyser Soze's right-hand man. He effortlessly plays a character of terrible coolness and poker-faced efficiency leading the dance that the rest of the characters must follow.

Director Bryan Singer has done well to bring such a momentous and involved screenplay to life and any gripes I may have cannot detract from the fact that the film, as a whole, is much better than the sum of its parts.

Ah, the Usual Suspects. My personal favorite movie of all time. Don't let my bias be a fool. Perhaps it's not THE best movie ever, but it's one that I never get tired of.

If you like flash and bikinis and breath-taking camera angles, you won't find them here. Usual Suspects is not an "epic," and it doesn't pretend to be. It's a modestly-budgeted piece by a fresh director (who later went on to do the X-Men movies, a FAR departure).

A great, gritty script, beautifully-acted characters, and what many have called the greatest movie ending of all time, are some of the shining qualities that make the Usual Suspects an object worthy of praise above its humble-looking shell.

The casting is very unusual but somehow fits perfectly. Gabriel Byrne is convincing as the ex-con trying to build a new life when he gets drawn back into his old life. Stephen Baldwin has the role of his career as the smart-mouthed and cocky professional. Kevin Pollak takes a big departure from his usual good comedy self to take a more dramatic role. Benicio del Toro literally takes a one-dimensional character with absolutely nothing in the script to give him character, and he fleshes it out with brilliant mannerisms and memorable mumbling to show incredible acting creativity. Kevin Spacey as we know him was born from this movie. His manners and fast-talking yet shy gimp nature are a treat to listen to throughout the flick.

Without giving away the plot, the best and most genius parts of the movie are the subtleties. After you see the ending, and the truth hits you like a ton of bricks, you have to watch it again. On the second time through, you'll jump up and point at the screen whenever you spot a clue you missed the first time. It's even possible to watch the movie multiple times and see something new with every viewing. It's that attention to detail that make the deceptively innocent-looking Usual Suspects one of the greatest movies of all time.