The Usual Suspects is a 1995 crime thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri and Pete Postlethwaite.
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. Praise went towards the mystery elements, screenplay, plot twist, and Spacey's performance. McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. In 2016, the Writers Guild of America ranked the film as having the 35th-greatest screenplay of all time.
Plot While lying badly wounded on a ship docked in San Pedro Bay, career criminal Dean Keaton is shot dead by a shadowy figure whom he calls "Keyser." The police recover 27 bodies and two survivors from the ship: Arkosh Kovash ("Ákos Kovács"), a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns; and Roger "Verbal" Kint, a physically disabled con artist. U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan arrives in Los Angeles to interrogate Verbal in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin. Meanwhile, FBI agent Jack Baer visits Kovács in hospital.
In an extended flashback, Verbal relates how he and Keaton, and their associates, arrived on the ship. Six weeks earlier, in New York, Keaton and Verbal were arrested and placed in a police lineup alongside fellow criminals Michael McManus, Fred Fenster and Todd Hockney. None of them admits to participating in the truck hijacking they're accused of and are returned to a holding cell, where McManus proposes a heist to get revenge on the NYPD. They rob a jewel smuggler being escorted by corrupt cops, netting millions in emeralds. Leaks to the press result in more than fifty policemen being arrested. The group travels to California to fence the jewels through a man named Redfoot, who connects them to another jewel heist. The heist goes badly, and they're forced to kill their target, who is carrying synthetic heroin.
The men learn the job was arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi, who claims to be a representative of Keyser Söze—a mysterious Turkish crime lord. According to legend, Söze killed his own family while they were held hostage by his Hungarian rivals, then massacred his enemies. Söze subsequently vanished, conducting business from the shadows via underlings, most unaware they work for him. Law enforcement and the criminal underworld regards him as a fearsome urban legend, unsure if he even truly exists.
Kobayashi tells the men that they attracted Söze's attention by unwittingly stealing from him. He will spare their lives if they destroy a shipment of cocaine brought to San Pedro Bay by Argentinian drug dealers for sale to a Hungarian gang. After Fenster is killed attempting to flee, and the others fail to intimidate Kobayashi in his office, they agree to the job.
During Kujan's interrogation, he learns there was no cocaine on the ship, and Söze was seen on board. At the hospital, Baer learns that Kovács has seen Söze, and a sketch artist begins drawing him. At the conclusion of Verbal's flashback, he and his companions attack the ship and kill numerous gangsters before discovering there is no cocaine onboard. A mysterious figure kills Hockney, McManus, Keaton and a prisoner in one of the ship's cabins, then sets fire to the ship as Verbal looks on from the dock.
Kujan learns the prisoner killed on the ship was a smuggler who escaped prosecution by claiming he could identify Söze. Instead of cocaine, the Argentinians were planning to sell the smuggler to Söze's rivals. The smuggler's lawyer was Edie Finneran, Keaton's girlfriend, who was recently murdered. Armed with this information, Kujan deduces that Keaton was actually Keyser Söze: he organized the assault on the boat as a pretext for assassinating the smuggler and faking his death. Verbal confesses that Keaton was behind everything, but refuses to testify in court. Verbal's bail is posted, and he is released.
Moments later, Kujan realizes that Verbal fabricated his entire story, improvising on the spot by piecing together details from random items in Rabin's cluttered office. Verbal walks outside, loses his limp and flexes his supposedly disabled hand. As Kujan races outside in pursuit, a fax arrives at the police station with the sketch artist's facial composite of Söze, which reveals Verbal Kint is actually Keyzer Söze. Seconds ahead of Kujan, Verbal gets in a car driven by "Kobayashi" and departs.
Cast Kevin Spacey as Roger "Verbal" Kint/Keyser Söze:Singer and McQuarrie sent the screenplay for the film to Spacey 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 Spacey in mind. 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 Byrne lived, and make it in five weeks. Chazz Palminteri as Agent Dave Kujan:Singer had always wanted Palminteri 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. Pacino would later say it was the one film he has most regretted turning down. 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. Stephen Baldwin as McManus:Baldwin 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 Baldwin. Benicio del Toro as 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. Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi Suzy Amis as Edie Finneran, Keaton's attorney and girlfriend Giancarlo Esposito as FBI Agent Jack Baer Dan Hedaya as Sergeant Jeff Rabin Cástulo Guerra as Arturo Marquez Morgan Hunter as Ákos Kovács Ron Gilbert as Daniel Metzheiser Peter Greene as Redfoot (uncredited) Scott B. Morgan as Keyser Söze (in flashbacks) (uncredited)
Production Origins Bryan Singer met Kevin Spacey at a party after a screening of Singer'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. Singer 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.The Usual Suspects DVD commentary featuring Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, . Retrieved September 27, 2002 McQuarrie based the name of Keyser Söze on one of his previous supervisors, Kayser Sume, at a Los Angeles law firm where he worked, 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 role of Agent Dave Kujan 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 able to offer the actors only 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 one another. That money fell through, and Singer used the script and the cast to attract PolyGram to pick up the film negative.