'The Usual Suspects' Review: Not Unusual Enough
The 1995 heist movie “The Usual Suspects” is easily most known for its substantial twist in the last few minutes. Whether you know the twist or not, you can have a good time watching the movie, but don’t expect it to stick with you for too long.
It’s undoubtedly that the secret of the movie is well kept, but it’s questionable if it makes the movie better since we, the audience, never really care about any of the characters (whether they’re involved in the twist or not).
The movie is nowadays sold on its famous ending, but I’ve never heard anyone talking about any other aspect of the film when they recommend it to me. I think I can see why now. Nothing about the movie is ‘bad’, per se, but just mediocre. The plot and characters are about as cliche as you can get in the crime genre, especially Gabriel Byrne’s Dean Keaton character. He is supposed to be this former criminal who wants to reform and stay with his girlfriend, but those are his only character traits. Other characters in the movie tell us about him, some say he is a great guy, others are a bit more skeptical. But we never see anything that leads us in either direction. His girlfriend has maybe two lines of dialogue, so we don’t care about her (so why should he?), and he doesn’t really try that hard to not be a criminal.
The rest of the ‘usual suspects’ (admittedly a great title and the set-up at the beginning is creative) are made up of slightly less cookie-cutter types, but don’t have nearly as much screen time. Benicio del Toro was mildly interesting as Fenster, who I really have no clue as to his job. Kevin Pollak was quite good, but still his usual self, as Hockney (also don’t remember his role). I do know that Stephen Baldwin’s McManus was the munitions expert, but he’s kind of a walking cliche as well.
The last, and best, member of our fab five is Verbal Kint, played juicily by Kevin Spacey. Yeah, Spacey’s an asshole, and that kinda sucks. But he was a great actor, which is evident here. Kint is a cripple, but pretty self-aware about it. The character does have a bit of a tonal shift from clueless nobody to smart-aleck and back again. I preferred the smart-alecky parts, as they gave me some vibes of another Spacey role, that of Lester Burnham in “American Beauty”. He plays that smug, prick-ish character, perfectly suited to Spacey’s real-life persona. He is by far the most engaging screen presence in the film but Kint is still far from his greatest performances.
Along with Spacey’s acting, I also enjoyed the technical elements of the movie. The editing, cinematography, and score were all near perfect. There were probably a few too many unnecessary and distracting camera zooms, but the whiplash-inducing edit and moody score sold all of the more mysterious parts of the story. A very heisty, thriller-esque tone was established, and I dug it.
In the end, I don’t think “The Usual Suspects” is a transcendent, or even highly enjoyable movie. It was enjoyable, and a good way to pass the time, but it wasn’t much more than a heist flick on technical steroids. I never cared about any of the characters, least of all the protagonist, who is NEVER developed (the filmmakers must have assumed his disability would make you sympathize with him). The movie plods from heist to heist, each getting progressively bigger until the finale, which is not as spectacular as I had hoped.
Still, I had a good time watching the movie, and it’s definitely a more finely tuned crime caper than the usual stuff.
{★★½☆}