The Usual Suspects - just the facts

The Usual Suspects - just the facts ( A article written in 2007 )

The Usual Suspects is a 1995 American movie written by Christopher McQuarrie (who earned an Oscar for the screenplay) & directed by Bryan Singer. It stars Kevin Spacey (who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance), Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Pete Postlethwaite, Benicio Del Toro, & Kevin Pollak.

For Sale : The Usual Suspects (2 Disc Special Edition) [1995] by Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, and Kevin Pollak (DVD - 2002) Cost £15.99 Including Postage and Packaging

The Usual Suspects tells the story of Roger "Verbal" Kint (Spacey), a small-time con man, who is in a police interrogation, & tells his interrogator, Agent Kujan (Palminteri), a convoluted story about events leading to a massacre & massive fire that have just taken place on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro Bay. Using flashback & narration, Verbal's story becomes increasingly complex as he tries to explain why he & his partners-in-crime were on that boat.

The film, shot on a $6 million budget, did not create much excitement prior to its initial release & was released in few theaters, but it received favourable reviews & was given a wider release, grossing far more than expected. The film eventually became one of the most highly regarded of the crime-drama genre. Ten years after its release, it is consistently found in the Top 20 on the Internet Movie Database's Top 250 films (as of May 2007 it currently resides at #18).

Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot & /or ending details follow.
The movie begins with a man lying on his back. He attempts to light a trail of spilled gasoline with a match in an attempt to destroy the ship, but it is extinguished by a stream of urine from an unseen person. The figure then approaches the man on the ship, & the two enter a brief conversation. The two men seem to know each other, the shadowy man is addressed as "Keyser", & the man lying on the ship as "Keaton". Keaton asks what time it is, & after replying Keyser appears to shoot him twice, (although Keaton is not on screen while this happens), then uses his cigarette to set the ship ablaze as he makes his escape.

We then cut to Agent Kujan who is interrogating Verbal Kint on the status of criminal Dean Keaton (Byrne), who was involved in the boat fire. Despite reports that Verbal & a Hungarian man who nearly died from burns & assorted injuries are the only survivors, Kujan seems unwilling to believe that Keaton is dead, & insists that Verbal tell him the full story, despite the fact that Verbal has already made his statements & been granted immunity.

Verbal's story begins with five crooks, who are brought together in a police line-up on trumped-up charges. They are an eclectic bunch: Keaton is a corrupt ex-cop who appears to have gone legit (and whom the audience recognizes as the murdered man from the first scene); McManus (Baldwin) is a crack shot with a temper & a wild streak; Fenster (Del Toro) is McManus' partner & speaks in mangled English (so much so that, according to DVD bonus material, even the actors themselves had trouble understanding him); Hockney (Pollak) is a tough talking, attitude-laden professional hijacker who forms an instant rivalry with McManus; & Verbal himself, a diminutive, crippled con artist. One thing is certain: although all of them are guilty of something, they're probably innocent of what they're actually being accused: hijacking a truck full of gun parts.

While being held, the five suspects join forces to plan the robbery of "New York's Finest Taxi Service"—an armed-escort courier service used by jewel smugglers & run by corrupt NYPD officers. Besides being lucrative, the heist will be the newly formed crew's revenge against the NYPD. Verbal Kint plans & organizes the robbery so no one is killed, the corrupt cops are arrested, & the Taxi Service is put out of business. Kint, Keaton, McManus, Fenster, & Hockney travel to California to fence the stolen gems.

While in California, their fence, a man called Redfoot, suggests another job: the robbery of Saul Berg, a local jewel smuggler. But the robbery goes wrong, & the crew is forced to kill Berg's bodyguards. When Saul refuses to hand over the case of jewels, Verbal kills him & the group leaves. Later, when the crew opens the case, they discover they've been cheated. Berg was smuggling drugs, not jewels.

Furious at being cheated, McManus confronts Redfoot. Redfoot reveals the job was given to him by a lawyer named Kobayashi (Postlethwaite), who now wants to meet McManus & the crew. At the meeting, Kobayashi blackmails them all into doing a job for someone named Keyser Söze, threatening them with his knowledge of their criminal records & Saul Berg's murder. Keaton, Fenster, McManus, & Hockney react to Söze's name with a fear bordering on terror (although Keaton, despite having heard of Söze, loudly insists that there is no such person), while a bewildered Verbal asks who Keyser Söze is. When asked why the five of them have been selected, Kobayashi reveals that at some point in their lives each of the five men has at some time stolen from or otherwise wronged Söze's shadowy criminal organization, albeit unwittingly (including the theft of gun parts that brought the men together, which is attributed to Hockney), & the job they're going to do will function as compensation for their debt. Furthermore, it was Kobayashi & Söze who arranged the lineup in New York, with the intention being to approach the five of them there. Unfortunately for their plans, Keaton's lawyer/girlfriend Edie was able to arrange their release too quickly for Kobayashi & Söze to do so.

Meanwhile, during Verbal's narrative FBI agent Jack Baer, a friend of Kujan's, has been investigating the incident from another angle, by going to the hospital where the only other survivor has been taken. Once there he immediately recognizes the man as Arkosh Kovash, a Hungarian gangster of some notoriety. Kovash begins screaming about Keyser Söze & trying to escape in the middle of treatment despite the extremely serious nature of his injuries. Baer is intrigued & quickly arranges to have an interpreter & sketch artist sent in to hear Kovash's account of things & description of Söze, whom he claims to have seen "killing many men".

At this point, Verbal is prompted by Kujan to tell him about Söze. Keyser Söze, as Verbal relates it, is organized crime's version of the monster under the bed. When he was a small-time Turkish drug runner, a rival Hungarian gang tried to seize his territory & business by taking his family hostage, raping his wife, & traumatizing his children in the process. Söze, in response, killed his own family & all but one of the threatening gangsters, who is spared in order to carry the news of the event to the rest of the gang. Söze then initiated a brutal vendetta against the gang, systematically eliminating their friends, family, children, lovers, parents, & even their debtors, as well as their homes & businesses before eventually disappearing. He is a criminal mastermind, & his name strikes fear into the heart of even the most hardened of criminals. With time, Söze's story has become half myth, with more & more improbable stories added onto the legend until, despite rumors that Söze is still an active criminal, most people have come to either doubt his existence or disbelieve it entirely. In one of the film's most memorable moments, Verbal describes it by saying "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Verbal returns to the narrative & tells about the job Kobayashi wants them to do: on a ship docked at San Pedro, California (the same ship seen at the film's beginning), two gangs are meeting to finalize the sale, & execute the transfer,of $91 million in cocaine. One of them is an Argentinian group that has contested Söze's underworld empire for some time, & are now trying to recover from the damage of competing with Söze. They are therefore to be prevented from making the sale. If the suspects wait for the deal to be sealed, they may help themselves to the cash the other gang will be bringing to the deal, but this will require fighting twice the number of guards.

Fenster loses his nerve & attempts to flee; several hours later Kobayashi tells the remaining four where to find his body. The group agrees to try to kill Kobayashi or get him to release them from the job. He refuses to do either despite having a gun to his head, & instead details a chilling list of deaths & mutilations that will befall the people they love the most, including Keaton's girlfriend Edie, whom Kobayashi has already brought out to Los Angeles for business matters.

Spacey as "Verbal" in The Usual SuspectsThe suspects turn their focus to the job, & decide to wait for the money to be present. Despite the extra risk, they feel that if they are going to risk their lives, they deserve a payoff. Keaton tells Verbal to stay back & flee if things go wrong. After the heist seems to be on the verge of success, Keyser Söze himself appears & puts an end to all of the remaining suspects, save Verbal himself, who is hiding when he witnesses Keaton's death at Söze's hands. As Verbal tells the story, a new revelation comes to light: Baer finds out that among the many victims is a man named Arturo Marquez. Marquez had previously offered the names of many criminal associates in order to avoid jail time, including that of Keyser Söze. This man has been shot twice in the head, which is Söze's calling card. Furthermore, it is discovered that there were, in fact, no drugs on the ship. Kujan believes that the whole point of the exercise was not to interrupt a dope transaction, but rather to create a diversion in order to allow Söze to kill the informant.

Kujan returns Verbal to the crucial point: is Keaton dead? Verbal is sure: he saw Söze pull the trigger for the two head shots. But what was Söze actually shooting at? Verbal's view of Keaton was blocked, & Söze himself just a shadowy figure in a coat seen from a distance. Could he have misread the scene? Could Söze & Keaton be allies, & might Söze be covering for Keaton? As Kujan points out, Keaton has successfully faked his death once before, during the course of a criminal trial.

It is Kujan's belief that Keaton is actually Söze, which raises the question: why is Verbal, then, even alive? Why did Keaton tell him to run, if his whole objective was to kill anyone who might turn Keaton/Söze over to the police? Kujan is convinced it's because Keaton wanted Verbal to tell the police the story of how he died, & that Verbal was the only one who wasn't smart enough to figure it out. Verbal breaks down into tears & admits that the whole plan, from the beginning, was Keaton's idea, even the heist in New York for which Verbal had previously taken credit. By this time, Verbal's bail has been posted, & he departs with his legal immunity, deciding to take his chances on the street rather than trust the dubious safety of the Witness Protection Program.

Verbal retrieves his personal effects from the jail warden: a gold watch, a gold cigarette lighter, & a pack of cigarettes. Kujan, relaxing in the office he used for the interrogation, commented that Verbal was left alive to keep the legend of Keyser Söze alive. Suddenly he starts to notice details from Verbal's story appearing on objects around the room; most notably, the cups from which they both have been drinking coffee are made by a company called Kobayashi Porcelain. Finally putting the pieces together correctly, Kujan scrambles outside, just missing a fax with the artist's impressions of Keyser Söze's face, which looks almost exactly like the now-released Verbal Kint. As Verbal leaves the jail, his distinctive limp suddenly disappears, & his contorted, palsied hand straightens out. He flips open his lighter (an action Verbal previously proved unable to do), deftly lights a cigarette, & then steps into a waiting Jaguar limo driven by "Mr. Kobayashi" departing just before Kujan arrives & misses him. The film closes with two quotes Verbal has told during the course of narrating the story; "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist", & then, describing Söze's disappearance after destroying the Hungarian gang in Turkey "And like that, he's gone."

Spoilers end here.

Cast Gabriel Byrne - Dean Keaton
Kevin Spacey - Roger "Verbal" Kint
Stephen Baldwin - Michael McManus
Kevin Pollak - Todd Hockney
Benicio Del Toro - Fred Fenster
Pete Postlethwaite - Kobayashi
Chazz Palminteri - US Customs Agent Dave Kujan
Dan Hedaya - Sergeant Jeffrey "Jeff" Rabin
Giancarlo Esposito - FBI Agent Jack Baer
Suzy Amis - Edie Finneran

Sources
The title is a reference to the film Casablanca. On multiple occasions in that movie, when confronted with a crime he does not really want to solve, Captain Renault orders his men to "round up the usual suspects." In The Usual Suspects, such an undiscriminating dragnet is exactly the kind of operation that resulted in the five main characters meeting in a police line-up.

Benicio del Toro's delivery of the line "He'll flip ya'. Flip ya' for real" is reminiscent of a comment made by jazz pianist Thelonious Monk to Nica de Koenigswarter in footage from the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1989). Monk's exact comment, about finding someone to decipher his handwriting after de Koenigswarter gave him the gift of an expensive magic marker, was "Get somebody that can decipher that for you, you know, & say what it means... & get what it means... you know. It'll upset you. You'll flip. I mean flip for real."

As described in the DVD commentary, the character of Söze is based on murderer John List, who murdered his whole family & then disappeared for almost two decades (but was ultimately apprehended).

The line "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" may come from a prose poem in the collection Le Spleen de Paris written by Charles Baudelaire: "Mes chers frères, n'oubliez jamais, quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières, que la plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!".

Production The lineup scene was originally written to be a serious scene but the actors had been messing about & laughing so much that Singer actually put the funniest version in.

According to the DVD commentary, the stolen emeralds were real gemstones on loan for the movie.

Also according to the DVD commentary, the scene in which the crew meets Redfoot after the botched drug deal, Redfoot flicks his cigarette at McManus' (Baldwin) face. The scene was originally to have the Redfoot character flick the cigarette at Baldwin's chest, but the actor missed & hit Baldwin's face by accident. Baldwin's reaction in the film is real. The commentary also said that the actors had big inputs opn their personas, with the good writing being added to by this.

While embraced by most viewers & critics, The Usual Suspects was the subject of harsh derision by some. Roger Ebert, in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times, provided a rating of one-and-a-half stars out of four. He wrote in part:

"The first time I saw 'The Usual Suspects' was in January, at the Sundance Film Festival, & when I began to lose track of the plot, I thought it was maybe because I'd seen too many movies that day. Some of the other members of the audience liked it, & so when I went to see it again in July, I came armed with a notepad & a determination not to let crucial plot points slip by me. Once again, my comprehension began to slip, & finally I wrote down: 'To the degree that I do understand, I don't care.' It was, however, somewhat reassuring at the end of the movie to discover that I had, after all, understood everything I was intended to understand. It was just that there was less to understand than the movie at first suggests.
The story builds up to a blinding revelation, which shifts the nature of all that has gone before, & the surprise filled me not with delight but with the feeling that the writer, Christopher McQuarrie, & the director, Bryan Singer, would have been better off unraveling their carefully knit sleeve of fiction & just telling us a story about their characters - those that are real, in any event. I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation... the 'solution,' when it comes, solves little - unless there is really little to solve, which is also a possibility."
In a poll on IMDb, the movie was voted as having the best plot twist, beating out The Sixth Sense, The Crying Game, & Witness for the Prosecution.

Awards
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actor (Spacey)
Best Original Screenplay (McQuarrie)
BAFTA Awards
Best Film (Singer, McDonnell)
Best Screenplay—Original (McQuarrie)
Best Editing (John Ottman)
Edgar Awards
Best Motion Picture Screenplay (McQuarrie)
Independent Spirit Awards
Best Screenplay (McQuarrie)
Best Supporting Actor, Male (Del Toro)
National Board of Review Awards
Best Supporting Actor (Spacey)
Best Acting by an Ensemble (cast)

Trivia

Spoiler warning: Plot & /or ending details follow.
The manila envelopes containing the characters' personal biographies are handed out in the order the characters die.
Spoilers end here.
The Usual Suspects was the second movie where Peter Greene refers to someone else as "The Gimp", the first being Pulp Fiction ("Bring out the gimp"), referring to Kint as "the gimp" in this movie.

Films
In the first Dr. Dolittle movie, at the pound, a dog behind bars confesses "I am Keyser Söze."
In one scene of the 1998 comedy Wrongfully Accused, Leslie Nielsen's character, Ryan Harrison, makes up a biography for himself using objects around the room.
The computer animated film Hoodwinked is a children's movie loosely based on reinterpreting Little Red Riding Hood into a parody of The Usual Suspects.
Spoiler warning: Plot & /or ending details follow.
During the ending of Scary Movie, Cindy Campbell sits in the police station trying to make sense of everything, finally realising that the killer is mentally handicapped Doofy Gilmore (after her coffee cup fell down in the same way Kujan's cup fell down, with Doofy's name printed on its bottom). He is seen walking away & proceeds to shed his outfit & fake mustache, revealing himself not only not handicapped, but actually to be a 'cool' guy who jumps into reporter Gail Hailstorm's car. The two drive off, with the throwing the fright mask out as the final piece of evidence. Having arrived too late to capture him, Cindy stands in the middle of the street, helpless (though, unlike Kujan, she is run over seconds later).
Spoilers end here.

TV shows
In "Peep Show" (Channel 4 UK) The two central characters travel to Exeter University & stay at the "Keyser Soze" Halls of Residence.
In an episode of Family Guy (The Thin White Line), Peter Griffin attempts to make up an alias using objects in the room, but fails ("Pea... tear... griffin", the mythological creature suddenly flying through the room).
In an episode of Arthur a cartoon version of Lemony Snicket, named Persimmony Glicket meets Fern in a bookstore while he is disguised as a customer. As he leaves the store, she realizes it was actually him & runs outside. After she runs out, she stops on the street & looks around just as Persimmony catches a ride in a towncar with Persimmony's assistant as the driver.
In an episode of the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, Eric McCormack's character Will says he's watching The Usual Suspects as he never saw who Keyser Söze is before. Then Sean Hayes' character Jack walks in & tells him it's Kevin Spacey.
In "The Puppet Show", an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Scooby Gang thinks they've been tricked by a dummy, prompting Xander Harris to say "So, the dummy tells us that he's a demon hunter. & we're, like, fine, la la la la. He takes off, & now there's a brain. Does anybody else feel like they've been Keyser Soze'd?"
In The Dukes of Hazzard (film), Bo Duke was talking about a woman whom he used to love that just disappeared on him (she actually hooked up with his cousin Luke). Bo said, "She pulled a Kaiser Soze on me. Poof! & she was gone!"
In episode 22 of the sitcom Yes, Dear's 4th season, the two married couples go to counseling to resolve issues. The main character tells a story of, "why he needs to have control" which is later proved by the doctor to be a fraud. As he walks out of the counselors office, the camera focuses in on his foot, which changes from a limp to a regular step, & he is shown to be grinning.
In the 31st season finale episode of Saturday Night Live, Andy Samberg explains to guest host Kevin Spacey why he was late for the show. Spacey then discovers that the story was a lie, from items around the room, & through a fax from Samberg with a police-style sketch of his face & the caption "I Lied!".

Computer game
In the computer game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, typing in 'keysersoze' will give the player 500 gold.
The McManus sniper rifle in the video game Saints Row is named after Stephen Baldwin's character, who uses a sniper rifle at one point in the movie.
In Namco Bandai's RPG trillogy Xenosaga a background character by the name of Soze Kukai is mentioned in the games' encyclopedia entries as being the grandfather of the series protagonists. The truth is that "Soze Kukai" doesn't really exist & is simply a fictional persona created by the government to justify the existence of the government-sponsored Kukai Foundation. Additionally, the chairman of the Foundation is referred to as the "Kaiser" which would technically make him Kaiser Soze Kukai.
In Max Payne, the protagonist describes a mob enforcer Rico Muerte as "... a regular Keyser Soze, a spook story told to keep the apes in line."

Music
The Usual Suspects inspired Jay-Z's video "The City is Mine".
The film serves as the inspiration of the video of the Common song, "Testify". In the video, a man is on trial for drug-dealing & his wife pleads his innocence. At the end, after he has been convicted & she has been cleared, she changes her demeanor, strolling out of the courthouse, smoking a cigarette as a car approaches to pick her up. Then the detective who arrested her husband runs out of the building & stands, baffled, in the street.
Keyser Söze is mentioned in several songs:
"Take the Long Way Home" by the Bloodhound Gang.
"Wailin'" by Outkast.
"Voodoo Roller" by Space.
Rapper Fat Joe mentions Keyser Soze in his part of the remix of the LL Cool J song, I Shot Ya.
Punk band Link 80 have a song called "Verbal Kint" on their 17 Reasons album.

The movie is not called The Unusual Suspects or The Usual Subjects

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