🍿 Movies

The Usual Suspects

1995 Reviewed October 8, 2026 #the-usual-suspects

Verdict

One of those films where the ending makes you want to watch everything again right away. A great ensemble cast and a twist that holds up, for anyone who likes being outsmarted by a movie.

Pros

mindboggling ending
an ensemble cast where every character earns their screentime
one very unique performance
a heavily stylized flashback that sticks out from the rest of the film

Cons

the music doesnt leave much of an impression

twists done right

The Usual Suspects, in accurate mystery fashion, lives and dies by its ending. I am happy to report that I think this ending is phenomenal. It hits the exact notes that make you sit there seeing the credits roll by, thinking, what an intricate tale. Twists usually always make films better for me, as long as they seem coherent and realistic with the characters and the story. This movie undoubtedly fulfills those requirements. Without giving anything away: it is the kind of ending that sends you straight back to the beginning in your head.

the ensemble

In general this movie is a very good lesson in how to make an ensemble cast compelling within the short runtime of a standalone movie. Within that limited time the filmmakers have to make sure each character of the main cast gets a sufficient amount of screentime, usually in proportion to the importance the character has to the story. Three of the suspects get the most room: one feels like the central character, one is a kind of leader, and the third gets a lot of screentime too, for some other reason… Kobayashi, for the little screentime he has, always carries an ominous aura around him. I couldnt think of a single weaker performance either, most were top notch, especially the ones with more screentime: the more screentime an actor gets, the better their performance has to be, and this movie seems to have mastered that. The fact that no one feels like filler is a very compelling argument for the quality and thought put into these characters and their portrayals.

Info bite: what wasnt in the script. A lot of what makes this ensemble feel alive came from the set, not the page. Bryan Singer kept parts of the story from his cast and sometimes misled them on purpose, so their performances would point in the wrong directions: Gabriel Byrne spent the whole shoot believing his character was Keyser Söze and only learned the truth when he saw the finished film. Benicio del Toro realised his character mainly existed to die early as a warning to the others, so he asked to invent a bizarre persona of his own and improvised large parts of his mumbling performance. The famous lineup scene was meant to be serious, with the suspects playing it cool in front of the police. After a tense day of shooting in a prison, Singer took the cast out to lunch on the lineup day, everyone came back giddy, and del Toro kept farting during the takes until nobody could keep a straight face (watch Gabriel Byrne, standing right next to him, cover his nose). Singer was annoyed at first, but liked how it showed the camaraderie between the five, and kept it. Sources: TV Tropes, Reddit

the look

The cinematography mostly stays grounded, but a few moments break out of that. I remember a long take, one long shot without a cut, and above all one flashback that tells a criminal legend, so heavily lit, edited and stylized it feels almost like a drug trip. In visual media I prefer a unique approach to cinematography, the more unusual and varied the better, because it stays with you way longer. The music, on the other hand, didnt leave much of an impression on me.

spoilers: the twist(s)

In one of the first scenes I watched Verbal and immediately told myself “this guy is a psychopath”. I was not at all expecting him to be the main villain, but in hindsight I feel kinda genius for that.

Verbal also got a lot of screentime, and as it turned out we got the reason for that right at the end. The fax scene was top notch. Kevin Spacey’s rambling performance is the one I meant above.

Kujan concluding that Keaton is Keyser Söze felt plausible for him, but it got overruled so fast by the big final reveal that it felt somehow empty at first. Thinking about it more, that might be exactly the point: Kujan gets his answer, you relax with him, and then the floor gets pulled away. That is probably also why it sits so close to the real twist.

The stylized flashback is Verbal’s own telling of the Söze legend. Knowing that, the drug-trip look makes a lot of sense.