Movie Review: The Usual Suspects
I hated this movie. I really wanted to like it too because I like a lot of the cast and the director. The bits I had seen made it seem like a really interesting crime/mystery thriller. Sadly the film tries too hard to outsmart its audience. My one rule for movies is that when the credits roll I should at least be able to say what happened in the story and why. I cannot answer either of those questions with The Usual Suspects.
On the surface it seems to be a story of a group of criminals pulling deadly jobs under the manipulation of a powerful crime lord named Keyser Soze. Kevin Spacey’s character Kint spends 90% of the film’s runtime relating this story. But then a twist at the end casts all of it into doubt leaving us unsure if anything we saw actually happened. What’s more we have no idea why this story was told. There is literally no reason for Kint to tell it. So the end result is 100 minutes of…stuff. Some of it is interesting on its own. Some of it is funny. The acting is pretty good. But all of it is ultimately inconsequential. The film may as well have ended with it all having just been some guy’s dream. You’ll feel cheated in the end. Don’t waste your time on this one.
Grade: D
