Rating: 17/20 (Jen: 18/20)
Plot: A guy with a messed-up foot, one of the titular suspects, shares a serpentine tale with a policeman.
I guess I never thought about it, but director Singer got the title for this from Casablanca.
Josh, a guy who doesn't appreciate Jack London's "To Build a Fire" nearly as much as he should, picked this movie for the Oprah Movie Club. Well, sort of. He told me it was one of his favorites and noticed it wasn't on my blog. I guess I picked it for the Oprah Movie Club since I hadn't seen it in a while. There's a twist, but it wasn't a twist since I had seen the movie. I'd contend, however, that this movie is better a second or third or fourth time through. When you know everything, you pick up on the little clues sprinkled throughout the movie that you wonder how you didn't notice the first time. I asked Josh what he liked so much about this movie, and he cited the writing as one of the reasons, and as an exercise in foreshadowing, it's so well done that you do want to watch it two or three more times after you see it a first time. My favorite of these clues, by the way, is the urine we see in one of the opening shots, a thick urine that turns out to be a genius bit of nudgery if you're really really paying attention. However, a really good twist ending with some clever storytelling leading up to it is not enough to make a movie great. The actors create memorable characters even if I kind of wish they each had their own prequel to further develop them. Well, not Stephen Baldwin. Baldwin faces are generally distracting, and his is not an exception here. But career criminal Keaton (Byrne) or Fenster (Del Toro, with that odd accent) or especially Pollak's Hockney should each get their own movie. Kevin Spacey is a guy I never want to like, but he's about perfect here, a guy playing the role of a guy playing a role. Just as the viewer could get lost in Verbal's (perfect nickname, no?) story as it unfolds, refolds, and unfolds again, you could almost get lost in his performance, and it's something else that makes subsequent viewings rewarding, when a lot of his lines become dramatically ironic when the pieces are all together in your mind. His "devil" is that type of character you need to see more than once to discover how fully realized he is, how multi-dimensional or complex. You can throw out the adjectives or other descriptors, but you can't nail him. He's a cocky son of a bitch, essentially spending the length of the entire movie dicking around with the police just because he knows he can and saying that he's scarier than God. And, of course, he calls himself the devil in the film's most memorable line: "The greatest the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Spacey's performance is exceptional, but it's one of those that didn't even seem very good the first time I watched this. It wasn't until I watched it knowing that he's a character playing a character that I realized how brilliant it is. I enjoyed the rapport of all of them when they're in scenes together, especially the comic stuff in the jail cell. I wish there was more of that. Josh mentioned a great melding together of scripted writing and improvisation, and I'm really not sure how much improvisation there is, but I did like some of the humor in this thing. Singer's direction has very little style. It's simple really, something that almost clashes with the incredibly complex plot.
Question: You can call Soze/Verbal a genius prankster all you want, but didn't he completely screw up in this? I mean, the authorities end up with a pretty accurate picture of the guy, so the anonymity is gone. His tomfoolery is going to make it impossible for him to ever show his face again, right?
Oh, there are spoilers up there if you haven't seen this movie. I can't think of any reason why I should keep the Oprah Movie Club write-ups spoiler free.
"The Usual Suspects" is apparently a lot like Jack London's "To Build A Fire" -- it's better the second time around. But, without getting into comparing grapes and prunes, I'll start by saying that this is one of those movies that has so much veil and mystery to it, it beckons you to watch and rewatch and watch again. On your first watch, you have to put the pieces together on who is who? Who is the true villain? On your second watch, you not only try to catch all of the clues that tricked you the first time, but you also try to get an understanding of how these characters came to be and how they were being used. On your third-plus viewing, you end up moving beyond the script and camera and try to get a sense of how these actors approached their scenes and how the director chose to tell the story. I completely admit that this is not a stand-alone movie. What I appreciate about how this turned out is that the script was brilliantly done, the actors make the most out of their characters, and the director chose the best way to tell the story on the screen. Now, just understand, Shane-Followers, that while your author is a staunch supporter of the classics and can't concede that stories can be told and retold in better ways, he's an experienced viewer and is a genius at his approach to storytelling.
ReplyDeleteYou know, my wife tells me that last sentence was a real back-handed compliment. So, before the sting settles on his cheek (either butt or face), I'll completely concede to Shane-Followers that he is the best at what he does and is with out a doubt smarter than me. In fact, I'm humbled that he even mentioned my name in his blog.
ReplyDeleteOk...now I'm being told that last comment sounded sarcastic...
ReplyDelete2 of my 4 1/2 readers will tell you that I'm NOT a staunch supporter of the classics at all. Either that or I'm wildly unpredictable with which classics I like and which ones I don't.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the back-handed and sarcastic compliments, by the way. They're appreciated.
I definitely agree that this is the kind of movie that demands to be seen again and again. My father, a staunch supporter of the classics, always says that's the mark of a great movie.
What about Stephen Baldwin? I just can't stand that guy's face. Or the other guys' faces. Do the Baldwins have a sister? If so, does she look just like the rest of them? I can't decide if that's hot or not, but I'm leaning toward not.
So apparently, Brian Singer saw this as a cross between Rashomon and Double Indemnity and also compared it to Citizen Kane. Those are all classics and all three better than The Usual Suspects. Right? Oh, he also compared it to The Anderson Tapes which I haven't seen but looks interesting.
The Usual Suspects is in the top 30 on imdb.com, and there's got to be a reason for it. I wouldn't put it in my top 30, but I wouldn't really argue with anybody who would.
Tell your wife that Cat Wall says hi...