The Usual Suspects (1995) is a crime movie with a superb script,
tightly directed action sequences, compelling performances and one of the great
twists to come out of 1990s cinema. Unfortunately the people involved with the
film now resemble the people they play in the movie in the sense that they have
pretty spotty history.
You have Kevin
Spacey, who has been accused by multiple men of sexual harassment and assault,
and is now under investigation by Scotland Yard (https://bit.ly/2C77Yna). Then there is the director, Bryan
Singer, who has been accused of sexual assault by a minor (https://bbc.in/2Prp7K8). You also have Stephen Baldwin, who has
endorsed Donald Trump, a man who lest we forget, has also been accused of
sexual misconduct (https://bit.ly/2BZn4Hc). The Usual Suspects indeed.
It is therefore
awkward to praise this movie in a post #MeToo era, but to be fair the first
time I watched this movie I had no idea these people were allegedly this
disgusting. Like everyone else I just thought Kevin Spacey was a great actor
and I had heard that The Usual Suspect was
one of his best movies. I rented it, since this was in the mid-2000s when
people still rented DVDs, and overall had a great time. I had some problems
with the big twist at the end, but I enjoyed it even more when I realized it
gets spoofed in a Leslie Nielsen comedy.
As previously
stated, my rule now with the many, many films that have been made with actors
and directors with a possible history of harassment is to try and remove them
from the art they made and focus on the work of the other people who were
involved in the movie. The big twist and the film’s dialogue would not exist
without screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, who has since gone on to direct two
outstanding entries in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Fingers crossed he
has never done anything shady apart from working with Bryan Singer. The film
also has great supporting characters; be it the late Pete Postelthwaite, Chazz
Palminteri, and Benicio Del Toro trying to be memorable by acting with a speech
impediment just like in The Last Jedi.
Given how today’s
movie landscape is over-saturated with superhero movies, in part thanks to
Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, The Usual
Suspects also makes feel a bit nostalgic for a different time when studios
made movies with gangsters set in the real world instead of with metahumans
shooting rays out of their eyes. McQuarrie’s script focuses on five characters
who are somewhat blue-collar workers in the criminal world. The five (Spacey,
Baldwin, Del Toro, as well as Kevin Pollack and Gabriel Byrne) meet for the
first time after being rounded out as suspects by the New York police following
a truck heist.
Even though none
of them actually committed the crime, the five crooks decide to get back at the
cops by actually pulling off a heist right under their noses. Their new
partnership and the subsequent crimes they pull sets them on a collision course
with Keyser Söze, a crime lord who comes with his own urban legend that scares
other criminals at night. The legend of Keyser Söze is particularly memorable as
the details include him murdering his own family when they are taken hostage by
a rival criminal gang. Now that is a crime lord you do not want to offend.
All of these
details are told by Spacey’s character, Roger “Verbal” Klint. He is telling
them in flashbacks to Palminteri’s character, a cop trying to make sense of a
massacre on a boat involving several dead gangsters and some unreliable
survivors. It’s a pretty good way for a screenwriter to tell a story and leads
to the great line of dialogue by Spacey: “The greatest trick the devil ever
pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”
On first viewing,
that is a very juicy line spoken by great actor. Today we know that
unfortunately that line was said by an actor who allegedly was doing horrible
things while pretending to be a decent man, so it sadly has a double meaning. The Usual Suspect is a great movie. It’s
a shame some of the people who were involved in making it are not.
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