The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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Near the end of The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey, in his Oscar-winning performance as crippled con man Roger "Verbal" Kint, says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." This may be the key line in this story; the farther along the movie goes, the more one realizes that not everything is quite what it seems, and what began as a conventional whodunit turns into something quite different. A massive explosion rips through a ship in a San Pedro, CA, harbor, leaving 27 men dead, the lone survivor horribly burned, and 91 million dollars' worth of cocaine, believed to be on board, mysteriously missing. Police detective Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) soon brings in the only witness and key suspect, "Verbal" Kint. Kint's nickname stems from his inability to keep his mouth shut, and he recounts the events that led to the disaster. Five days earlier, a truckload of gun parts was hijacked in Queens, NY, and five men were brought in as suspects: Kint, hot-headed hipster thief McManus (Stephen Baldwin), ill-tempered thug Hockney (Kevin Pollak), flashy wise guy Fenster (Benicio del Toro), and Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a cop gone bad now trying to go straight in the restaurant business. While in stir, someone suggests that they should pull a job together, and Kint hatches a plan for a simple and lucrative jewel heist. Despite Keaton's misgivings, the five men pull off the robbery without a hitch and fly to Los Angeles to fence the loot. Their customer asks if they'd be interested in pulling a quick job while out West; the men agree, but the robbery goes horribly wrong and they soon find themselves visited by Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), who represents a criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze. Soze's violent reputation is so infamous that he's said to have responded to a threat to murder his family by killing them himself, just to prove that he feared no one. When Kobayashi passes along a heist proposed by Soze that sounds like suicide, the men feel that they have little choice but to agree.

Synopsis by Mark Deming, Allmovie.com

In a summer top-heavy with bloated thrillers that lack character and suspense, "The Usual Suspects" is a near-classic blend of mystery, personality, humor and terror, laced with one stunning shock after another.

The modern film noir of your dreams, "Usual Suspects," begins by opening a chasm. We're in the dark or, as the titles ominously inform us, "San Pedro, California. Last Night." The actor we assume must be the picture's star, Gabriel Byrne, lies swallowed up in night on the deck of a ship, dropping a blazing matchbook in a rivulet of kerosene. A shadowy figure approaches, twists a gun sideways, fires. The deck explodes in a ball of flame.

Darkness. Light. Water. Fire. Life. Death. Where do we go from here? And what, really, did we just see?

Most directors, having staged that scene, would then settle into something more predictable, like the usual preposterous one-man-against-a-hundred formula-thriller malarkey: "Die Hard With a Vengeance" drivel or "Clear and Present Danger" crock. There'd be an escalation of the carnage, maybe of the atmosphere. But the story and people wouldn't deepen an inch or go anywhere strange.

Not "The Usual Suspects"–a movie that takes its title from "Casablanca," its setup from "Reservoir Dogs," its nervy dialogue from the Dashiell Hammett-Elmore Leonard-George V. Higgins tradition, and its spirit from the pounding, racy heart of the best films noir.

The second film by a brilliant, young director-writer team–Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie–this gangster thriller about five top-of-the-line professional criminals trapped in a bicoastal maze of deception and conspiracy pleases you in lots of ways. It's a nerve-shredding suspense movie about corruption, a bravura actor's show full of deliciously twisted cops and robbers, and a complex riddle packed with unexpected turns.

Singer and McQuarrie start with a situation close to "Reservoir Dogs": a band of salty crooks divided by temperament and united in a job that blows up in everyone's face.

Here, the bad guys meet after being rousted together for a New York Police Department lineup (six weeks before that explosion). They include Byrne's killer ex-cop Dean Keaton, Kevin Pollak's cold-blooded bomb expert Todd Hockney, the team of Stephen Baldwin's grinning marksman Mike McManus and Benicio Del Toro's mumbling hipster Fred Fenster (a wonderfully eccentric performance), and Kevin Spacey's limping motormouth grifter Roger "Verbal" Kint. Kint apparently is the one survivor of that shipboard holocaust, who now is spilling his story to U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri).

According to Kint, the quintet, angry about the lineup, joined forces to heist an illegal cop-courier operation. Big mistake. Behind the scenes is another, even more malevolent presence: an international criminal mastermind, legendary among crooks and cops, called Keyser Soze (or So-zay). Soze is a fiend incarnate, according to the Kint, who says even God doesn't scare him as much.

Soze, the devil pulling all the strings, is the character who most reveals the innately fantastic structure of "Usual Suspects"–which, like much of what it shows us, appears to be something other than what it really is. For most of the movie, modern Fu Manchu Soze is present only through his attorney, Kobayashi, who, despite vague Oriental mannerisms, is played, puzzlingly, by the saturnine British actor Pete Postlethwaite.

In typical fragmented noir chronology, the plot unwinds in both the present–as FBI man Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) tracks Soze–and the past. Palminteri's pugnacious Kujan and Spacey's Kint–his manner veering between maddening placidity and whining self-pity–are the duo we see most in the present. (Those two superb actors, crammed into a tiny interrogation room, are at the top of their considerable form). Gabriel Byrne's morose Keaton, a "Miller's Crossing" refugee, dominates the past.

But "The Usual Suspects" is an ensemble movie in the best sense. Everyone cooks. Even the minor characters, with few or no lines–like Carl Bressler's Saul Berg, the drug entrepreneur who clings to his goods with four guns on him–stick in your mind. And the bigger parts–including Suzy Amis as Keaton's lawyer-lover Edie Finneran, and Dan Hedaya as Rabin, Kujan's sad-faced sidekick–all have great lines, pungent moments.

Singer and McQuarrie won the Sundance Festival Grand Prize two years ago, when their mini-budget "Public Access" shared top fiction feature honors with "Ruby in Paradise." But their breakthrough movie, strangely, was never distributed. It's doubtful they'll be overlooked again.

What strikes you most about "The Usual Suspects," is its mix of ingenuity and absolute confidence. Joining a terrific cast with top young technical talent–including cinematographer Tom Sigel ("Into the West") and composer-editor John Ottman–Singer and McQuarrie have crafted something special: as smooth and clever as the classics, as hip as Tarantino.

Review by Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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The Usual Suspects (1995) Special Edition [Re-Up]

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Special Features:

DISC 1
Audio Commentary with Director Bryan Singer and Writer Christopher McQuarrie
Audio Commentary with Editor/Composer John Ottman

DISC 2
Round Up: Deposing The Usual Suspects:
- "Pursuing The Usual Suspects" featurette (23:56)
- "Doin' Time With The Usual Suspects" featurette (25:40)
"Keyser Söze: Lie Or Legend" featurette (17:50)
"Introducing The Usual Suspects" original featurette (6:24)
"Heisting Cannes With The Usual Suspects" featurette (4:02)
Bryan Singer's Gag Reel (5:38)
"Taking Out The Usual Suspects" Interviews and Outtakes:
- Interview with John Ottman (17:00)
- Bryan Singer Introduces Kevin Spacey and Friend (1:00)
- Interview Outtakes (2:52)
Deleted Scenes (Hosted by John Ottman)
- Introduction by John Ottman (0:34)
- "The Restaurant Scene" (3:04)
- "Finding Arturro's Body" (1:44)
- "McManus And The Hungarian" (1:23)
- "Planting The Bomb" (1:00)
- "Extra Verbal" (1:49)
International Trailer (2:16)
US Trailer (with Introduction by John Ottman) (Intro - 1:13; Trailer - 2:18)