Just the Ticket #162: The Usual Suspects (List Lookback)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Usual Ticketmaster.

When choosing movies to review for the List Lookback series and which movie should go in each month, I mostly made sense without stretching logic too much. But when it came to November, I handed logic over to the cuckoo and let it fly off into the sunset. And no - to those of you who didn't pay attention to the title of this post - I'm not doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...this year. I'm just being random and meta for the sake of having an intro.

Instead, I thought which movie would give me the most to talk about, and concocted a threadbare justification to tie it to Thanksgiving: an awkward gathering of weird and uncomfortable characters; and unfortunately, the passage of time has made nothing so weird, uncomfortable, and awkward as the rounding up of The Usual Suspects by Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey.

So as I talk about how good and influential this movie is despite its perverse pedigree, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, pray for my soul in the comments at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue so people will acknowledge that the Devil exists now that we have a multiply-convicted felon in charge of our country for the next four years, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest crime-solving news on my content.

Named after a line from Casablanca and based on a script by frequent Tom Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, The Usual Suspects were rounded up, interrogated, and released in 1995 as a crime thriller directed by Bryan Singer and produced in part by his company Bad Hat Harry (which I'm guessing Singer named after his own penis, but that's merely unfounded humor at his expense).

The movie's final twist is legendary. It's been parodied in everything from Family Guy and Key & Peele to It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. And the cast (Kevin Spacey's personal character being ignored for the moment in separation from the actor and performance here) is incredible.

But the thing about twists is, sometimes, they can be too big, poorly foreshadowed, and go completely against established character.

Following a police lineup, criminals Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne, Assault On Precinct 13), Michael McManus (Bio-Dome's Stephen Baldwin, giving the role his usual Busey-meets-Cage level of crazy intensity for the time), Fred Fenster (Sicario star Benicio del Toro, delivering his lines like he's channeling Lou Costello by way of Marlon Brando), Todd Hockney (Number One Christopher Walken Impersonator Kevin Pollak, of Better Things), and Roger "Verbal" Kint (Number Two Christopher Walken Impersonator Named Kevin, and eight billionth best apologizer in the world, Kevin Spacey) agree to do a series of seemingly Robin Hood-esque crimes for fellow criminal Redfoot (The Mask villain Peter Greene) and fixer Kobayashi (Alien 3's Pete Postlethwaite...in yellowface) on behalf of the mysterious and feared Keyser Söze.

But when the final job goes wrong (a drug heist of a Hungarian smuggling ship docked in the San Pedro Bay), leaving a Hungarian mobster severely burned and wounded and Verbal as the only other survivor, it's up to Detectives Kujan (Chazz Palminteri, Analyze This) and Rabin (Dan Hedaya, Alien: Resurrection) and FBI Agent Baer (an early role for Gustavo Fring himself, Giancarlo Esposito) to put the pieces together.

I won't spell it out blatantly if you haven't seen this twenty-nine year-old movie, but the twist (which only really works the first time around and doesn't give the viewer much foreshadowing of note to look out for) turns what seems like a normal "one last job" heist movie into an And Then There Were None-level thriller, complete with a mastermind so diabolically method in their fifth-dimensional social chess mastery that they barely make sense. And actually, there is foreshadowing in The Usual Suspects, but it's so blatant that I almost don't want to count it. Who does most of the talking? Who's the one character that has all of the ideas but no one notices at first? That's right; it's Pepe Silvia! Oh, and fuck you, Viewing Audience! You just watched an hour-forty-six-long movie where most of what happened in it was a lie!

Enjoy your oral- and anal-focused dialogue, cultural insensitivity, disposable and unmemorable characters (the acting was entertaining and high quality on all parts, but if you ask me at gunpoint what kind of criminals each of the titular characters were, just save yourself some time and shoot me), and unconvicted Hollywood sex offenders, fools!

If you couldn't tell, watching this movie made me uncomfortable to the point that I almost hate it. It wasn't torturous like trying to sit through a Prehysteria! sequel or a Midnight Run movie, but The Usual Suspects was the kind of twist-reliant movie that's far less fun on repeat viewings, and Singer and Spacey being involved really didn't help my enjoyment, even with my efforts to separate the people from their art in my head.

I do have to give the movie some credit for its impact on popular culture, though.

D+

Now that I've finished being honest with myself, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, pray for my soul in the comments at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue so people will acknowledge that the Devil exists now that we have a multiply-convicted felon in charge of our country for the next four years, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest twisted news on my content.

Sean Wilkinson,

Out.