Its title gleaned from a line of dialogue in "Casablanca," "The Usual Suspects" consists mostly of talk, although it starts and ends with explosions.
The first blowup is onscreen, when 27 people die and $91 million in cocaine is incinerated on a boat. The second comes in your own mind, when the identity of the master criminal Keyser Soze is finally revealed.
Unraveling with the air of a 1940s film noir, the crime mystery lulls you into a trance, then sneaks up behind you to knock you on your backside. You expect to land on the floor but instead fall through a trapdoor that leads to a twisting waterslide. Once you finally get to the bottom, you're leveled with a revelation that makes you question whether or not you really went through the trapdoor or whether the substance on the slide was water after all.
Much of the film is told in flashback, as a hardened customs officer played by Chazz Palminteri grills a meek, nervous, small-time shyster, Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey). Verbal, who is afflicted with cerebral palsy, survived the boat explosion, and the Palminteri character is convinced Verbal is holding back some key information.
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Pressed, Verbal recalls events that started six weeks previously, involving a lineup of criminals brought together in New York on trumped-up charges. Verbal is thrown into a holding cell and an identification lineup along with Michael (Stephen Baldwin), Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Fred (Benicio Del Toro) and Todd (Kevin Pollak). The suspects piece together a heist to get back at the cops who have mistreated them.
The dialogue resembles that of "Reservoir Dogs" for the way it examines the methods lifelong thieves use to deal with one another. The criminals shoot the bull, ferret out weaknesses in one another's armor and spin one-liners.
The thugs get in over their head when their antics draw the attention of Keyser Soze, a psychopathic kingpin who operates as a phantom, working behind the scenes and never letting anyone see his face. Verbal explains that Soze recruited the men for a larger score and is to blame for the boat explosion.
It's in the depiction of Soze, revealed in brief flashes and obscured body shots, that the character takes on a formidable mythos. The words also paint indelible pictures. The criminals trade Soze stories, such as one in which he kills his own family to stave off the threat that a rival will go after them.
"Keaton always said, 'I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him,' " Verbal says. "Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze."
Soze's identity isn't revealed until late in the film, but those who hold to the big reveal as the most important point in the film miss out on its true mastery. It's not about the destination but the ride.
Above all, "The Usual Suspects" isn't about its own story but the ways it chooses to tell that story. Look past the twisting plot points and you'll find a squirrelly narrative that doesn't really focus on the crimes or double-crosses it represents, but the technique of the explanation itself.
The director-screenwriter team of Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, who were coming off their little-seen indie collaboration "Public Access," are out to manipulate what you see, how you react to what you see and what you thought you saw when a new revelation compels you to review what you saw before.
It sounds confusing, and it is. McQuarrie's script is a scurrying lizard of a yarn, scaly, swift and difficult to follow. For this reason, along with an ending that undermines much, if not all of the story that leads up to it, some audiences and critics felt burned.
Roger Ebert dismissed the movie as a parlor-game trifle and gave the film 1 1/2 stars. The Internet Movie Database voters disagree and consistently rank the film in the top 20 of all time.
Once you see "The Usual Suspects," you'll probably want to revisit it from time to time, not necessarily to see if the film will be able to trick you again, but to soak in the sleight of hand, appreciate the dialogue and dash into a lung-burning game of tag with the frenetic plot. There's nothing usual about this ride.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
● Rated R. Starring Kevin Spacey. Directed by Bryan Singer. 106 minutes. Available on DVD. For links to other reviews in the series, go to www. azstarnet.com/sn/review
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