“The Usual Suspects” is a 1995 crime thriller directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It runs 106 minutes and carries the tagline “Five criminals. One line up. No coincidence.” Kevin Spacey stars as Roger “Verbal” Kint, a physically disabled con artist who survives a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. Through flashback and narration, Kint tells a customs agent a convoluted story about the men who died on that boat and the crime lord who put them there.
Trailer, via Paramount Movies Digital.
A Lineup in New York
The film opens with Dean Keaton, a career criminal, lying badly wounded on the ship. He is shot dead by a shadowy figure he calls “Keyser.” Police recover 27 bodies and two survivors. One is Arkosh Kovash, a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns. The other is Verbal Kint.
U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan arrives in Los Angeles to interrogate Verbal in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD sergeant Jeff Rabin. Meanwhile, FBI agent Jack Baer visits Kovash in the hospital.
Six weeks earlier, in New York, Keaton and Verbal are picked up and placed in a police lineup with Michael McManus, Fred Fenster and Todd Hockney. The five are accused of a truck hijacking. The film never shows the case resolved, and none of the men admits to the crime. Back in a holding cell, McManus proposes a heist to get revenge on the NYPD.
The robbery nets millions in emeralds from a jewel smuggler escorted by corrupt cops. Leaks to the press result in more than fifty policemen being arrested. The group travels to California to fence the jewels through a man named Redfoot, who connects them to another jewel heist. That job goes badly. They are forced to kill their target, who is carrying synthetic heroin.
Kobayashi and the Legend of Söze
The men learn the job was arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi, who claims to represent Keyser Söze. According to legend, Söze killed his own family while they were held hostage by his Hungarian rivals, then massacred his enemies. He vanished and now conducts business from the shadows through underlings, most of whom do not know they work for him.
That premise is the engine of the film, and it is a good one. The structure asks the audience to trust a narrator who has every reason to lie. McQuarrie’s screenplay keeps the story moving through interrogation rooms and flashbacks, and the mystery holds because the film never tips its hand too early.
The Cast That Almost Wasn’t
The casting story behind “The Usual Suspects” is almost as interesting as the film. Singer and McQuarrie sent the screenplay to Spacey without telling him which role was written for him. Spacey called and said he was interested in Keaton and Kujan, but was also intrigued by Kint. That was the role McQuarrie had written with him in mind.
Gabriel Byrne turned the film down at first, thinking the filmmakers could not pull it off. He met McQuarrie and Singer, was impressed by Singer’s vision, then backed out for 24 hours over personal problems. He agreed to join once the filmmakers said they would shoot in Los Angeles, where he lived, and make it in five weeks.
Chazz Palminteri was always Singer’s first choice for Agent Dave Kujan, but he was unavailable. The role was offered to Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, both of whom turned it down. Al Pacino read for the part but declined because he had just played a cop in “Heat.” He later said it was the one film he most regretted turning down. Palminteri became available for only a week. When he signed on, it persuaded the film’s financial backers to support the film fully, thanks to his profile after “A Bronx Tale” and “Bullets Over Broadway.”
What the Film Gets Right
The mystery elements, the screenplay and the plot twist drew praise, and Spacey’s performance won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2016, the Writers Guild of America ranked the film as having the 35th-greatest screenplay of all time.
The film was shot on a $6 million budget. It began as a title taken from a column in Spy magazine called “The Usual Suspects,” after one of Claude Rains’ most memorable lines in “Casablanca.” Singer thought it would make a good title for a film. It was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, then released in a few theaters before a wider release.
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director | Bryan Singer |
| Writer | Christopher McQuarrie |
| Runtime | 106 minutes |
| Genres | Drama, Crime, Thriller |
| Budget | $6 million |
| Awards | Best Original Screenplay; Best Supporting Actor |
| Metacritic | 76/100 (7.6/10) |
The credited cast includes Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi, Suzy Amis as Edie Finneran, Giancarlo Esposito as Jack Baer, Dan Hedaya as Jeff Rabin, Paul Bartel as Smuggler and Carl Bressler as Saul Berg, alongside Benicio del Toro as Fenster.
Where It Stands
“The Usual Suspects” earns its reputation on the strength of its ending and the discipline of its telling. The film is not flawless. The middle stretch, where the crew moves from one heist to the next, leans on coincidence and momentum more than character. Del Toro’s Fenster and Baldwin’s McManus are memorable presences, but the film belongs to Spacey and Palminteri in that interrogation room.
What makes it last is the confidence of the construction. McQuarrie wrote a script that rewards a second viewing, and Singer shot it on a small budget without letting the seams show. The legend of Keyser Söze works because the film treats it as a story people tell, not a fact the camera confirms.
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