My Life at the Movies 2.24.09: 1995 - The Usual Suspects

Posted by DC Perry on 02.24.2009

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

1995 offers some strong contenders for best movie of the year. Apollo 13 shows us bravery in the face of certain death, as does Braveheart, but with more ass flashing. Toy Story was a stunning achievement in animation. Seven still keeps me up at night, and makes me question upgrading to the new version of Windows(seriously, people, do NOT browse for porn if you're using this). 12 Monkeys was a dark, gritty, dystopian science fiction thriller with just a hint of mental illness. But the best movie of the year was about evil hiding in plain sight, and a bad guy you couldn't help rooting for.



1995 at a Glance

US President: Bill Clinton
Median annual salary: $34,076
Gallon of gas: $1.15
Dozen eggs: $1.16
New house: $158,700
New car: $18,360
Movie ticket: $4.35
Boston Red Sox: 86-58, first place, American League East
Me: Switching my major from Engineering to English, thus setting myself up to be the only person on Earth with a degree in English and three years of Calculus


Before we go any further, I'd like to alert you to my spoiler policy. It hasn't really been an issue until now, but it will be for this and a few upcoming columns. If a movie is more than a year old, it's fair game. If it's more than ten years old – come on.



First, I want to thank Steve Martin for setting me up Sunday night. This is one of those movies that began with a very good idea for the poster. Five criminals are dragged in for a lineup. This is how Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) starts his explanation to the police investigating how he ended up as one of only two survivors of a ship fire in San Pedro, California.


If I told you the Loch Ness monster hired me to hit the harbor, what would you say?

Michael McManus (Stephen Baldwin) is a lunatic with a hair trigger. Fred Fenster (Benicio Del Toro) is his Spanglish-spewing partner. Todd Hockney (William Shat… oh, wait, Kevin Pollak) is a mechanic turned hijacker. Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) is a former cop who is now a reformed criminal, though the NYPD doesn't buy it. Verbal Kint is a small-time con artist who limps on a club foot and talks too much. They figure out pretty quickly that this isn't a normal lineup, since there aren't any decoys. The cops are mad about a gun heist that got pulled right under their noses, so they're shaking them down and hoping one of them will crack. Never one to pass up a business opportunity, McManus pitches a job to the other four, and despite Keaton's misgivings, they're all in.


It was all the cops' fault. You don't put guys like that into a room together. Who knows what can happen?

After making a withdrawal from New York's Finest Taxi Service and leaving a pile of indictments behind them, the five head for California to sell the merchandise to McManus' fence, Redfoot (an uncredited Peter Greene). They take on more work for Redfoot, who works for a man named Kobayashi (Pete Postlewaithe), who in turn works for Keyser Soze. Soze is the criminal equivalent of the boogey man. Verbal describes him to his U.S. Customs interrogator Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) as a Turkish criminal whose family was abducted by rivals. Rather than give in to their demands, Soze shot his family. Then he hunted down and killed his rivals, their families, and anyone who had ever had any contact with them.


And like that, poof. He's gone.

Kobayashi blackmails the five into hitting a ship in San Pedro that is supposed to be smuggling $91 million worth of cocaine to Soze's rivals. They are to burn the ship, destroy the drugs, and keep the money after killing the buyers. Fenster doesn't want anything to do with Soze, which just gets him killed. The other four threaten Kobayashi in return, but he threatens Edie (Suzy Amis), Keaton's lawyer ex-girlfriend, motivating him to go through with the San Pedro hit.

Before moving in, Keaton tells Verbal to stay back, and if anything happens to him, to tell Edie that he tried to keep her safe. After gunning down the Hungarian terrorists, Hockney is shot as he opens a car trunk full of cash. McManus takes a knife in the back, and Keaton is shot from behind. Keyser Soze shoots Keaton, then torches the boat with a gold lighter.


Keaton always said, "I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him." Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze.

Now that Verbal's story is finished, Kujan has a theory to share. Dean Keaton is Keyser Soze, and this entire operation was to cover his tracks. There were no drugs; in fact, the only thing of value on the boat was a man who could identify Soze. Edie Fineran is dead, and Keaton had already faked his death once. Verbal corroborates Kujan's story, then leaves, his bail having been posted.

As Verbal leaves, Kujan has an epiphany.



The plot of The Usual Suspects doesn't fall together neatly after you've discovered the big twist. In fact, it seems to revel in this fact, lingering over images of convoluted knots on the deck of the San Pedro ship. Verbal is the quintessential unreliable narrator. Everything he says is complete bullshit, but we accept it because of the narrative structure. He's soft spoken, he's infirmed, and he's the only one who saw what happened. Verbal leads Kujan along with an impromptu hard-boiled mystery and, in the end, he can never know how much, if any, of it was true. Thanks to Kevin Spacey's powerful performance, the audience buys the whole thing, and as Kujan pieces together the lie at the end, so do we, so that seeing Verbal get into the car with Kobayashi is as horrifying as it is impressive. Postmodernism and film noir are strange bedfellows, but The Usual Suspects makes it work, and for that, it is the best movie of 1995.