The Sunday Times (London)
August 27, 1995, Sunday
Pumping up the blood pressure
Stephen Amidon
Method acting, directional flair and a vivid, audacious, relentless intelligence well, what more do you want from an existential thriller, asks Stephen Amidon.
The Usual Suspects (18) starts where many movies end amid the aftermath of a horrific shoot-out. Before the opening roll, we find ourselves on a Los Angeles pier where about 30 men, including most of the film’s main characters, have just been slaughtered. Those few who have survived the blood bath are either burned so badly they resemble rejected pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken or are in the process of being finished off by a bullet in the brain. Like a Mike Tyson fight, the whole film seems to be over before it even gets started.
There is, however, one lucid survivor, a craven cripple by the name of Roger ”Verbal” Kint (Kevin Spacey). Arrested trying to flee the scene, he is brought to police headquarters, where, for the price of immunity, he offers to explain what happened. His testimony becomes the backbone of this remarkable film, allowing it to draw its drama not from what is going to occur but rather from why it has happened.
Verbal’s story begins in New York six weeks before the shoot-out, when five criminals are brought together, seemingly at random, for a police line-up. After the identity parade proves a washout, they are thrown into a single prison cell, where, naturally, they use their proximity to hatch a daring emerald heist. Within two days of being arrested, these five losers find themselves in the possession of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. They can hardly believe their luck.
Led by a corrupt ex-cop, Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), the gang heads out to Los Angeles, where they hope to fence the stolen gems. Once there, however, it soon becomes apparent that their meeting in that line-up was anything but chance. To their horror, they discover that a shadowy, much-feared drugs baron named Keyser Soze is pulling their strings. Soze, it seems, bears a grudge against each of the men and is blackmailing them into helping him rip off $90m-worth of cocaine from the cargo ship that will be the setting of the film’s preordained climax.
Although we know the ending is going to be cataclysmic, director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie are able to maintain suspense by posing a series of bloody riddles that are only answered in the film’s final frames. Who, for example, is Soze? Does he even exist? How does he know so much about the crooks? How did he manage to get them into the same line-up? And just why does he want them to raid that heavily guarded cargo ship?
Though the term ”existential thriller” is bandied about quite carelessly these days, The Usual Suspects has a stronger claim than most to that generic category. Up until (and perhaps even after) those last few movements, you are left in doubt as to the identity and even the very existence of the film’s key character. McQuarrie’s script is a minor masterpiece of insinuation and menace he casts us into utter confusion time and time again, only to rope us back with surprising plot twists. And even though some questions, such as the level of police participation in the plot, remain unanswered, the final revelation is dazzling enough to leave you feeling gratifyingly stupid.
Singer’s direction is equally assured. He has a full-blooded story to sink his teeth into, and he proves himself well up to the task. Although the picture is not without its share of wide-screen virtuosity, especially during a showdown in a parking garage and that bloody dockside battle, Singer is at his best when orchestrating the plot’s knotty character dynamics, keeping the gang’s balance of power in a constant state of flux. In an era when directors seem to come with either a visual sensibility or a facility for storytelling, it is heartening to discover a young film-maker who possesses both qualities.
Of course, he is greatly aided by an ensemble cast that rates right up there with the boys from Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, Kubrick’s The Killing, and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Byrne and Chazz Palminteri, as a tough cop, are as good as they have ever been, though it is Spacey’s cunning performance as the unctuous, enigmatic Verbal that steals the show. And Benicio del Toro’s idiosyncratic charisma in the role of the least clued-in of the thieves makes for as compelling a debut as Mickey Rourke’s in Body Heat. Only Stephen Baldwin’s performance as the gang’s thuggish muscleman seems ordinary, though this is hardly surprising given the fact that he is the fourth best actor in his immediate family.
In the end, however, what is most rewarding about The Usual Suspects is not method acting or directional flair, but its vivid, audacious, relentless intelligence. Like Soze himself (whoever he may be), McQuarrie and Singer prove themselves to be expert manipulators, doling out just enough information to make us think we have a clue, though by the time the lights come up it is clear we were always in the dark.
