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By Michael
Sragow, © Salon.com
Sep. 6, 2000 "The Usual Suspects"
Directed by Bryan Singer
Starring Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio Del Toro, Chazz Palminteri,
Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite, Kevin Spacey
MGM/UA; widescreen (2.35:1) and full screen (1.33:1)
Extras: Feature-length audio commentary by Singer and screenwriter Christopher
McQuarrie
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For my money,
"The Usual Suspects" was the pulp fiction of the '90s. This cunning entertainment
follows five top felons who become a crew after they're tossed together
in a lineup. The movie jumps back and forth from the aftermath of a catastrophic
raid on a ship anchored in San Pedro, Calif., to the men teaming up in
New York a mere six weeks before. It's the kind of picture that lays its
cards on the table, then reshuffles and switches decks without anybody
noticing.
On the audio
track of the DVD, the director, Bryan Singer, and the writer, Christopher
McQuarrie, explain how they balanced gunplay and mind games. They have
equal amounts of fun discussing the foreshadowing of "Who Is Keyser Soze?"
-- the evil genius who manipulates criminals and feds alike -- and deflating
fans who swear they saw a dead giveaway to his identity.
The producers of "X-Men" (on which writer McQuarrie also worked, uncredited)
said they hired Singer because of the killer instinct he showed with the
ensemble acting on this film. I believe it. In "The Usual Suspects," everyone
makes an immediate and lasting impression; it's no struggle to keep the
characters straight when the filmmakers ring in "Rashomon"-like variations
on the subplots.
Singer's murderers' row blends up-and-down performers with reliable vets.
Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin and Kevin Pollak reach their peaks to date,
while compulsively inventive Kevin Spacey does marvelous, jittery things
he hasn't done before, and Benicio Del Toro steals the lineup with a strangled,
whispery delivery that compels police to tell his character to speak English.
(He is speaking English.) All these actors, not just Spacey, bring seize-the-day
vitality to their hard-guy roles. Indeed, the two who seem to tickle Singer
and McQuarrie the most are Del Toro and Byrne. They say that Del Toro
transformed a conventional sidekick role into an endlessly intriguing
character by envisioning his crook as a "black Chinese Puerto Rican Jew."
And Singer is in awe of Byrne's ability to appear "effortlessly complex."
I loved hearing the filmmakers acknowledge their debt to David Mamet,
but their work is niftier than any of Mamet's macho reveries. Slowly pulled
into focus, its plot gains new shadings with every double-cross or blood
splash, and makes an audience feel satisfied, not snookered, when the
picture becomes dark-crystal clear.
Spacey plays a con artist with a bum leg and hand -- the weakest of the
bunch, the one closest to Byrne (who has the biggest rep) and the sole
survivor of an attempt to horn in on a supposed $91 million drug deal
between Hungarians and South Americans. New York customs agent Chazz Palminteri
is convinced that Byrne, an elite crook, was the ill-fated gang's mastermind
and may be alive. He demands to grill Spacey even after the local D.A.
cuts Spacey a cushy deal. Meanwhile, in a nearby hospital, the only Hungarian
survivor of the ship says that he looked into the eyes of Satan -- or
at least into the eyes of that barbaric criminal Keyser Soze. (Spike Lee
regular Giancarlo Esposito, in a goatee that makes him look like Thelonious
Monk, plays the FBI agent who badgers the survivor.) As the twin interrogations
close like pincers, what kicks off as a caper movie becomes demonically
complicated. Although "The Usual Suspects" never goes off the metaphysical
deep end, the mythic character of Keyser Soze brings back the specter
of encroaching evil that gave Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse movies the gleam
of adult fairy tales.
The filmmakers take relationships and themes endemic to the crime film
-- the brotherhood of thieves, the danger of entering women into criminal
equations, the risk that in a world outside the law there's always someone
more ruthless than you are -- and encourage their nitro-powered cast to
blow them up real good. Baldwin and Del Toro match up risibly well as
loyal, semipsychotic partners: They're unhinged in opposite ways, with
Baldwin as a hothead and Del Toro as a slippery number who moves with
such liquid self-effacement that he often registers as a blur. Pollak
is air-clearingly funny as the down-to-earth, wisecracking hardware specialist,
and Byrne, as a man society won't permit to go legit, finally nails the
brooding-Celtic bit. The filmmakers use Byrne's plight, his romance with
lawyer Suzy Amis and his bond with Spacey to add a veneer of poignancy.
But as they pretzel-twirl the narrative, they goose viewers to question
their own softhearted responses. The movie takes its emotional key from
Spacey's character, an obsessive talker (nicknamed "Verbal") who provokes
distrust because he uses words as a smoke screen or a weapon. The men
behind "The Usual Suspects" don't intellectualize or aestheticize pulp
fiction. In the end, they let us see straight through it -- and make us
love it anyway.
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Mad Dog Time
or Trigger Happy? Whichever name you know it as doesn't matter. It's the
same movie. And what a movie it is!
It's got
everything a movie should have... laughs, sex, violence and Gabriel Byrne.
And all cleverly interwoven into a story that's big on alliteration...
from Jeff Goldblum's "Shattering of the shins shit" to Gabriel Byrne's
"Zen Ben." Even the characters suffer the alliteration curse - Vic, Nick,
Mick and Wacky Jacky Jackson.
But that's
all part of the brilliance of the movie as is Gabriel Byrne's rendition
of "My Way" and the soundtrack.
If you haven't
seen it, get it out on video. If you have seen it, watch it again.
-Shelly
Ross, 1999
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