The Usual Suspects is a 1995 neo-noir mystery film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite, and Kevin Spacey.
The Usual Suspects | |
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Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Bryan Singer |
Produced by |
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Written by | Christopher McQuarrie |
Starring |
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Music by | John Ottman |
Cinematography | Newton Thomas Sigel |
Edited by | John Ottman |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 106 minutes |
Country |
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Language | English |
Budget | $6 million |
Box office | $34.4 million |
The plot follows the interrogation of Roger "Verbal" Kint, a small-time con man, who is one of only two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. Through flashback and narration, Kint tells an interrogator a convoluted story of events that led him and his criminal companions to the boat, and of a mysterious crime lord—known as Keyser Söze—who controlled them. The film was shot on a $6 million budget and began as a title taken from a column in Spy magazine called The Usual Suspects, after one of Claude Rains' most memorable lines in the classic film Casablanca, and Singer thought that it would make a good title for a film.
The film was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, and then initially released in a few theaters. It received favorable reviews and was eventually given a wider release. McQuarrie won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. The Writers Guild of America ranked the film as having the 35th greatest screenplay of all time.
Screenplay
A criminal, Dean Keaton, is lying badly wounded on a ship docked in San Pedro Bay. He is confronted by a mysterious figure whom he calls "Keyser", who shoots him dead and sets fire to the ship. The next day, the police recover twenty-seven bodies and only two survivors: Arkosh Kovash, a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns; and Roger "Verbal" Kint, a con artist with cerebral palsy. U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan flies from New York City to interrogate Verbal. The events that led Keaton, Michael McManus, Fred Fenster, Todd Hockney and Verbal onto the ship are then described by Verbal via flashback.
Six weeks earlier in New York, Verbal and the other four criminals were arrested as suspects in a truck-hijacking, only to be released thanks to Edie Finneran, Keaton's lawyer and girlfriend. They then decided to pull a heist to get revenge on the NYPD. Led by Keaton, they robbed a jewel smuggler being escorted by corrupt cops, netting millions in emeralds and getting over fifty cops arrested. They then went to California to fence the jewels through a man named Redfoot, who connects them with another jewel heist. The heist goes badly, and the men learn that the job was arranged by a British lawyer named Kobayashi. They meet Kobayashi, who says he arranged for their arrests in New York and that his employer, Keyser Söze—a mysterious Turkish crime lord whom each of the men have unwittingly stolen from—has ordered them to raid a ship manned by Argentinian drug dealers and destroy $91 million worth of cocaine being sold on board. Their reward will be the cash brought for the exchange, and being freed from Söze's influence.
During Kovash's interrogation, it is learned that there was no cocaine on the ship and that Söze was seen on board. Verbal then tells Kujan a legend about Söze: that he had murdered his own family when they were being held hostage by Hungarian mobsters, and then massacred the mobsters and their families before disappearing, doing business only through underlings who did not know who they were working for. Söze thus became a fearsome urban myth, "a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night".
Concluding his story, Verbal reveals Fenster was killed trying to flee; the men then threatened Kobayashi, only to accept the assignment when he threatened their loved ones. The men attack the ship during the night, killing several Argentinian and Hungarian gangsters before discovering there is no cocaine. Hockney, a prisoner in one of the cabins, McManus, and then Keaton are killed by an unseen assailant, who sets fire to the ship as Verbal looks on from a hiding place on the dock.
Kujan deduces that Keaton must be Söze, as the prisoner killed on the ship was Arturo Marquez, a smuggler who escaped prosecution by claiming he could identify Söze. Marquez was being represented by Edie Finneran, who has also been recently murdered. Kujan claims that the Argentinians took Marquez to sell him to Söze's Hungarian rivals; Keaton then used the assault so that he could kill Marquez personally and fake his own death. Verbal finally confesses that Keaton had been behind everything, but refuses to testify in court. Verbal's bail is posted and he is released.
Moments later, Kujan realizes that Verbal had been lying, piecing together details for his story from a crowded bulletin board in the office and the "Kobayashi" brand coffee mug he was drinking from. Meanwhile, Verbal walks outside, gradually losing his limp and flexing his supposedly disabled hand. As Kujan pursues Verbal, a fax arrives from the hospital where Kovash has finally provided a detailed description of Söze: a facial composite that looks exactly like Verbal. Kujan misses Verbal by moments as the latter disappears into a car driven by "Kobayashi".
- Stephen Baldwin as Michael McManus:
- The actor was tired of doing independent films where his expectations were not met; when he met with director Bryan Singer, he went into a 15-minute tirade telling him what it was like to work with him. After Baldwin was finished, Singer told him exactly what he expected and wanted, which impressed the actor.
- Gabriel Byrne as Dean Keaton:
- Kevin Spacey met Byrne at a party and asked him to do the film. He read the screenplay and turned it down, thinking that the filmmakers could not pull it off. Byrne met screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and Singer and was impressed by the latter's vision for the film. However, Byrne was also dealing with some personal problems at the time and backed out for 24 hours until the filmmakers agreed to shoot the film in Los Angeles, where the actor lived, and make it in five weeks.
- Benicio del Toro as Fred Fenster:
- Spacey suggested del Toro for the role. The character was originally written with a Harry Dean Stanton-type actor in mind. Del Toro met with Singer and the film's casting director and told them that he did not want to audition because he did not feel comfortable doing them. After reading the script, del Toro realized that his character's only purpose was to be killed to demonstrate Söze's power, and did not have any meaningful impact on the story. As a result, del Toro developed Fenster's unique, garbled speech pattern to make him more memorable as a character.
- Kevin Pollak as Todd Hockney:
- He met with Singer about doing the film, but when he heard that two other actors were auditioning for the role, he came back, auditioned, and got the part.
- Kevin Spacey as Roger "Verbal" Kint:
- Singer and McQuarrie sent the screenplay for the film to the actor without telling him which role was written for him. Spacey called Singer and told them that he was interested in the roles of Keaton and Kujan but was also intrigued by Kint who, as it turned out, was the role McQuarrie wrote with the actor in mind.
- Chazz Palminteri as Dave Kujan:
- Singer had always wanted the actor for the film, but he was always unavailable. The role was offered to Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, both of whom turned it down. The filmmakers even had Al Pacino come in and read for the part, but he decided not to do it because he had just played a cop in Heat. Palminteri became available, but only for a week. When he signed on, this persuaded the film's financial backers to support the film fully because he was a sufficiently high-profile star, thanks to the recent releases of A Bronx Tale and Bullets Over Broadway.
- Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi
- Suzy Amis as Edie Finneran
- Giancarlo Esposito as Jack Baer
- Dan Hedaya as Sergeant Jeff Rabin
Origins
Bryan Singer met Kevin Spacey at a party after a screening of the young filmmaker's first film, Public Access, at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. Spacey had been encouraged by a number of people he knew who had seen it, and was so impressed that he told Singer and his screenwriting partner Christopher McQuarrie, that he wanted to be in whatever film they did next. Singer read a column in Spy magazine called "The Usual Suspects" after Claude Rains' line in Casablanca. Singer thought that it would be a good title for a film. When asked by a reporter at Sundance what their next film was about, McQuarrie replied, "I guess it's about a bunch of criminals who meet in a police line-up," which incidentally was the first visual idea that he and Singer had for the poster: "five guys who meet in a line-up," Singer remembers. The director also envisioned a tagline for the poster, "All of you can go to Hell." Singer then asked the question, "What would possibly bring these five felons together in one line-up?" McQuarrie revamped an idea from one of his own unpublished screenplays — the story of a man who murders his own family and disappears. The writer mixed this with the idea of a team of criminals.
Söze's character is based on John List, a New Jersey accountant who murdered his family in 1971 and then disappeared for almost two decades, assuming a new identity before he was ultimately apprehended. McQuarrie based the name of Keyser Söze on one of his previous supervisors, Kayser Sume, at a Los Angeles law firm that he worked for, but decided to change the last name because he thought that his former boss would object to how it was used. He found the word söze in his roommate's English-to-Turkish dictionary, which translates as "talk too much". All the characters' names are taken from staff members of the law firm at the time of his employment. McQuarrie had also worked for a detective agency, and this influenced the depiction of criminals and law enforcement officials in the script.
Singer described the film as Double Indemnity meets Rashomon, and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time. You can get it a second time in a way you never could have the first time around." He also compared the film's structure to Citizen Kane (which also contained an interrogator and a subject who is telling a story) and the criminal caper The Anderson Tapes.
Pre-production
McQuarrie wrote nine drafts of his screenplay over five months, until Singer felt that it was ready to shop around to the studios. None were interested except for a European financing company. McQuarrie and Singer had a difficult time getting the film made because of the non-linear story, the large amount of dialogue and the lack of cast attached to the project. Financiers wanted established stars, and offers for the small role of Redfoot (the L.A. fence who hooks up the five protagonists with Kobayashi) went out to Christopher Walken, Tommy Lee Jones, Jeff Bridges, Charlie Sheen, James Spader, Al Pacino and Johnny Cash. However, the European money allowed the film's producers to make offers to actors and assemble a cast. They were only able to offer the actors salaries that were well below their usual pay, but they agreed because of the quality of McQuarrie's script and the chance to work with each other.
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