The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie - Nine out of 10

The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie

Nine out of 10

The Usual Suspects is one of the motion pictures that has won so much acclaim that it looked destined to enter the History of Cinema – and maybe it is there already, or it will be included, just as it is on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list https://www.listchallenges.com/new-york-times-best-1000-movies-ever-made/list/24 - and on the Top Rated, Popular Movies list at 32, https://www.imdb.com/chart/top?ref_=tt_awd – it is also the winner of two Academy Awards and many other key trophies…

That brings us to the problematic, or catastrophic participation – for the future of the feature in these or maybe any other compilations – of the director, Bryan Singer, who has had his share of scandals and though this cinephile is not up to date with what his status is now, it looks like he is not involved in the projects that would be his, if it were not for the private shenanigans, which obfuscate, maybe eventually annihilate for many, his achievements here and in other productions that he has helmed…

Most importantly though we have the involvement of Kevin Spacey, who has won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Usual Suspects – and for the leading role in the stupendous American Beauty - http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/03/american-beauty-written-by-alan-ball.html - but he is now definitely compromised, apparently stigmatized for his sexual abuses, making perhaps this movie anathema for future generations…

Judged without taking account of the said scandals, which again, could become impossible in an époque where there are so many glorious motion pictures without so much baggage to select from that the people of the future, if there is one after this pandemic and the Virus in the White House – more popular than ever, if you can believe the judgment of those Cult members that maybe deserve what they get, if there are so unadapted, such awful judges that they place their lives and those of their families into the hands of the Ultimate Crook – The Usual Suspects is remarkable, intelligent, astute, creative…

To end the Kevin Spacey chapter here, his character, Verbal Kint, has a key presence in the storyline and he could offer one of the biggest surprises in crime movies history, though about that we would not elaborate more, except to say that he may be right when he says…

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist,"

That is of course, if you believe in God and his adversary, the Devil, which I do not, but still, the idea that the mastermind of the plot tries to confuse, to make the investigators think he is not the Main Suspect, that he ‘does not exist’ as a criminal, that he has only had a limited presence in the scheme, indeed, he has a plea bargain for whatever he had admitted, sounds credible, smart and contributes to the value of the movie…

To begin with, the five Usual Suspects are lined up for identification and then locked together in  a police cell and all the artists are marvelous – for Spacey, amendments have been made, sort of, for his personal life – Gabriel Byrne as Keaton, Benicio Del Toro as Fenster, Kevin Pollak as Hockney and finally, another disgraced participator in this film, at least for this viewer, the infamous Trump supporter – apparently the first and one of the few in Hollywood – Stephen Baldwin, in flagrant opposition with his brilliant brother, an outstanding impersonator of the Biggest fool in the World – well, there would be others parked in bushes all over the world, but to have access to so much intelligence, best information, means to ‘wise up’ and fail so catastrophically, that makes one the Most Outstanding Cretin of them all…

As they are all in together, the criminals – not for this highjack that brought them to the lineup – plot a revenge that would bring them money and get many corrupt police officers in massive trouble, since they were offering various Traficant protection and even rides to their illegal transaction spots in their…official cars…

As it is expected for one of the most appreciated – still – movies in history, the plot is very complex and representative Kobayashi aka another regretted, brilliant actor, Pete Postlethwaite, enters the stage to announce The Usual Suspects that they each and every one of them have a debt to pay to the infamous Keyser Soze, his boss, and such a mythical figure that legends are circulated around him, placing his origins in Turkey, where rivals have entered his house, kidnapped his family to blackmail this vicious gang leader…

Something out of the grimmest horror movies happens in this mythical tale, when this Keyser Soze shocks everyone,  most of all the public in the cinema theater, when he uses his gun to shoot…his own family!!

Children, wife and only after he murders the intruders, letting one alive to go out and spread the story, to make his power grow, creating an image – if this ever happened, which with hindsight, it might not have, given the later developments – of an absolute psychopath, one that all adversaries must fear…

This feature is indeed more than just gripping, captivating, there are many passages where the immersion, absorption is total and thus this could be ideal for this terrorizing calamity that we have to live through and one absolutely vital aspect is to try to use Positive Psychology rules, one of which would have us establish a strategy to cope with adversity, by thinking of other things, trying to eliminate, at least temporarily, the obsessive images of thousands of dead, scenarios where millions would die and those who survive – aka you and me – might have to go out to the Post-apocalyptic scripts we have seen in 28 days and other such features…